Did the programmers for the Collins submarine computerization know how to program ?

Question

The book "Collins Class Submarine Story: Steel, Spies and Spin" says that one of the key people was

<<Bob Clark, Operational Software Manager, SWSC, project and DMO>>

Indisputably Clark would have known how to program.

A key factor for success in programming would be to personally check that each other person's work appears to work, and to accept none of it if it does not even appear to work.

Modern "performance management" nonsense can lead you to say "We know Jojo can't produce working code but we'll sneak in 0.0001% of his work into the system at each release and see how we get on".

Theoretically Clark might have left SWSC and gone to "project" leaving staff who knew nothing about delivering credible programs. Jojo could have been the new section leader.

I don't see in reports of Collins progress, reports that

"the team did A B C so we are confident they can do D".

Answer 1

Its like anything, some people know how to programme and to use it and others can just operate it as they are taught, its different if they know how its built and how it works then they would know how to use it properly! :)