So little actual software development in software engineering roles

[adler-wRvlPVLobi1/31tCrMuHxg at public.gmane.org (Stephen Adler)]

For those of us who have lots of grey in our hair, this is an unsettling 
situation. I've always wondered if such a group could come together and 
work on a project for profit. Cell phone apps, stock trading software, 
social networking plugins, what ever.. Or maybe one could form a 
"boutique" software development group. I once worked for a start up in 
Boston making a medical device. A software company in Canada was going 
to charge the company 1.5 million for developing some imaging software 
which I didn't think should cost 1.5 million, maybe several $100K. 
Furthermore, the Boston start up charged a Japanese company 1 million + 
for some software development which would have taking maybe several 
months of two to 3 guys who know how to code complete. Is it just a 
question of organizing such a group and advertising the groups services?....

On 01/09/2011 11:01 PM, Mark Woodward wrote:
> I have been looking around for positions having had my last project
> canceled. I'm so tired, it seems like "software development" is more
> "software integration" these days. Maybe I'm old and washed up. I don't
> know, but jeez, I LOVE writing software. I mean, I love it. Problems
> wake me up in the middle of the night with rapturous solutions. I mean,
> seriously, I don't care what kind of software I'm writing, just be
> something that does something.
>
> In the past few years, I've kept in touch with various high profile
> colleagues, hoping against hope that something interesting would show
> up. Sadly, no.
>
> Venture Capitalists should no longer have the initials VC, it should be
> more like "vC." I know times are tough, but the whole VC deal is
> supposed to help you develop a product. The new deal is that you more or
> less have to have it developed. Worse than that, it needs to be fully
> buzzword compliant. While this is not an entirely new thing, it has
> become much worse.
>
> Then, don't get me started on cloud computing. I mean, really, "cloud"
> computing. Talk about a buzzword. OMG then there's SaaS! None of these
> things are rocket science, and in many ways, they offer really powerful
> solutions to previously difficult or expensive problems, but not
> everything NEEDS to be cloud based. SaaS is a billing model, not an
> architecture, just ask skype.
>
> Lastly, for various reasons, I'm a generalist. That means I have a
> pretty wide exposure with some really deep experience in a few areas
> like low level C/C++ and OS stuff (Windows, Linux, BSD). I could write a
> book on the various programming issues: threads, processes,
> synchronization, memory management, I/O, DMA, compilers, algorithms,
> pseudo-AI expert systems, databases, SQL variations, optimizations, and
> on and on.
>
> What's the point?
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