Difference between revisions of "Advocacy"
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| + | This page aims at helping users of Haskell that want to present the language, listing resources, sketching ideas, providing good examples etc. |
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| − | Note: this page is under development. |
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| + | == A possible presentation == |
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| − | == Haskell Advocacy == |
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| + | If you are going to give a presentation on Haskell, consider the following topics to be included in your talk: |
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| − | === At Work === |
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| + | * Introduce functional programming, stressing the declarative style of functional languages, the functions-as-values concept, the possibility of expressing what you want to achieve instead of concentrating on specifying how to get it, and so on. |
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| − | Many people wonder why a language offering between 4 and 10 times better productivity hasn't swept the software industry yet. If you are working in the industry then you may already have had some conversations with managers about the possibility of introducing Haskell, and found that they always have some reason why this is not the right time or place. Maybe in a few months, or on another project. But not this one. |
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| + | == General Resources == |
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| − | This page is intended to help programmers understand what the real obstacles are and how to overcome them. |
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| + | * [[Why Haskell Matters]] |
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| − | ==== Management Structure ==== |
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| + | * [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/12/advocacy.html Why I Hate Advocacy] by Mark-Jason Dominus |
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| + | * [[Introduction]] contains a bit of advocacy. |
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| − | Any large technical organisation can be divided into three groups. At the top you have senior management, who are there to set the overall strategy of the organisation and make sure that the big things happen to keep the organisation doing what it does as the world changes around it. In the middle are the middle management who take the big strategic plans and turn them into discrete projects and work packages, and at the bottom are the engineers who actually do the work. |
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| − | Thats the theory. In fact things are not actually this simple. The middle managers are generally fully occupied with the "day job" of keeping the organisation ticking over, serving customers, meeting deadlines and generally making sure that the organisation does tomorrow what it is doing today. Any large organisation can only survive if these people are really good at this job and pay close attention to it, to the exclusion of almost anything else. And so large organisations have evolved a set of mechanisms to ensure this. Whole books have been written about how the senior management can motivate these people to do their jobs as well as humanly possible. So whenever you talk to one of these people about change, their first thought is how it is going to affect their primary job. If it makes that job harder, they won't want to know. And this is in fact a good thing, because if middle managers didn't keep a laser-like focus on doing their jobs well the organisation would not survive. |
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| + | [[Category:Community]] |
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| − | ==== Senior Management ==== |
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| − | Talking to middle managers about change is generally an exercise in frustration. So lets cut out the middle men and go straight to the top. Someone like the "Chief Technology Officer". |
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Latest revision as of 12:05, 17 July 2009
This page aims at helping users of Haskell that want to present the language, listing resources, sketching ideas, providing good examples etc.
A possible presentation
If you are going to give a presentation on Haskell, consider the following topics to be included in your talk:
- Introduce functional programming, stressing the declarative style of functional languages, the functions-as-values concept, the possibility of expressing what you want to achieve instead of concentrating on specifying how to get it, and so on.
General Resources
- Why Haskell Matters
- Why I Hate Advocacy by Mark-Jason Dominus
- Introduction contains a bit of advocacy.