Point taken. :) Let me ever so humbly posit, however, that this is the exact attitude that separates software developers from software engineers. If you want t

Point taken. :) Let me ever so humbly posit, however, that this is the exact attitude that separates software developers from software engineers. If you want to develop software without strict practices, that's just dandy, and you don't have to refer to yourself as a software engineer. It does not follow that software engineering is a joke: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132640 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132640. On the other hand, if you do want to be a software engineer, these practices can be applied to all projects, no matter how small or high-level. I think this may be what your professor was trying to say.