2010年上半年上午题英语内容

  Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion.An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices—waits or eats it raw.Software customers have had the same choices.

  Now I do not think software managers have less inherent courage and firmness than chefs, nor than other engineering managers. But false scheduling to match the patron’s desired date is much more common in our discipline than elsewhere in engineering. It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers.

  Clearly two solutions are needed. We need to develop and publicize productivity figures, bug-incidence figures, estimating rules, and so on. The whole profession can only profit from sharing such data. Until estimating is on a sounder basis, individual managers will need to stiffen their backbones and defend their estimates with the assurance that their poor hunches are better than wish derived estimates.

观察一下编程人员，你可能会发现，同厨师一样，某项任务的计划进度，可能受限于顾客要求的紧迫程度，但紧迫程度无法控制实际的完成情况。就像约好在两分钟内完成一个煎蛋，看上去可能进行得非常好。但当它无法在两分钟内完成时，顾客只能选择等待或者生吃煎蛋，软件顾客的情况类似。

我现在并不认为软件经理内在的勇气和坚持不如厨师，或者不如其他工程经理。但为了满足顾客期望的日期而造成的不合理进度安排，在软件领域中却比其他的任何工程领域要普遍得多。而且，非量化方法的采用，少得可怜的数据支特，加上完全借助软件经理的直觉，这样的方式很难生产出健壮可靠和规避风险的估计。

显然我们需要两种解决方案，开发并推行生产率图表、缺陷率，估算规则等，整个组织最终会从这些数据的共享上获益。或者在基于可靠基础的估算出现之前，项目经理需要挺直腰杆并坚持他们的估计，确信自己的经验和直觉总比从期望得出的估计要强得多。

-----这个英文的愿望来自《人月神话》-----