Getting programmers, particularly undisciplined programmers under 40 years of age, to do what you want, is tough.

I've mentioned what a well-disciplined shop would look like, and lots of programmers chimed in with, "I wouldn't work there ..." and they're right. I wouldn't hire them.

There'd be no cellphones, no games, no spending hours on the phone arguing with the wife or the real-estate salesperson ... and there'd be no coding or soldering before the documentation is complete and reviewed/approved. There'd also be no going home before the day's work is done, and certainly no vacation so long as the project is behind schedule.

That's never been a problem, here, but I can see how M$ might have difficulty getting enough staff for their large jobs if they tried to enforce such policies.

I personally feel that M$ products would be better if properly documented in advance of the coding and all written in ASM. However, the M$ management has to get the work out the door eventually, else they won't make any money. The result is that they give the programmers a bit more freedom with tools, and, most of all, with code size and efficiency, and the result is that they make billions of dollars with products that are 1000x as costly, 100x as large and 10x as slow as they need to be, simply because they'd never get the programmers to do it any better.

RE