Citizen Developers Will Ruin Software, Discuss

1 min.

September 30, 2014

Our use of term ‘citizen’ has evolved. It has transmogrified from its original context pertaining to: any native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to its government. Today then, citizen means: a consumer-level or non-specialist participant who engages in the formal activities of an established profession. The citizen (insert job title) will typically carry out his or her actions and then subsequently post the results on social networks and various Internet-based forums.
The problem, encapsulated
Here’s the problem in a nutshell. Ask a citizen developer if they think citizen programming is a good thing and they will say yes. Ask a developer and they will say no. Ask a software testing and management company and they will say yes, but only if the software is tested and managed and controlled. Ask a cloud development company and they will say yes, but only if the resulting software is compartmentalized, virtualized away and containerized appropriately. Ask a security-aware code analysis company and they will say yes, but security measures need to be baked into the development process itself so that security checks are not left to the final stage, when there is often additional pressure to complete the project in time for deadlines.
Read the full article at Forbes.

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