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Perhaps we should stop trying to claim we do science or engineering and call it a craft [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship https://en.wi

by icc97 9y ago

Perhaps we should stop trying to claim we do science or engineering and call it a craft [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship [1]: http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org

zaarn 9y ago
It's probably not too wrong. Software development unites a lot of things from science, engineering and craftsmanship. I guess we should stop trying to cram it into preexisting categories and take the best parts of each subcategory.
52-6F-62 9y ago
Well, there are definitely distinctions to be made, as in electrical and electronics work — I'm drawing crude lines here — An Electrician may be a master of his craft, but yet not an Electrical Engineer, who may be a masterful engineer but yet not possessing as deep an understanding as a Physicist, and so on. That said, the scale tips both ways. A physicist may know why and how an electron behaves a certain way within a material making up a resistor, but not have the practical know-how to use that in an effective way as an engineer might. An engineer might be able to hack together a prototype, but lack the refined master skill and discipline of an electrician to employ the designs and put it into a real world context on a regular basis. It goes without saying that you'll much more rarely see a physicist out in the field laying cable for power distribution in a new train station, etc. There's an old aphorism that leans into this a bit: "the wise things confound the simple, and the simple things confound the wise". I'm abusing that a bit, but still kind of works. I'm making a gross guess here, but maybe it's that science and engineering, in modern times, hold more of a lofty position and boast greater intellectual capacity traditionally, that so many would not want to be 'reduced' to a craftsman. We might do better to consider them just different aspects of the same whole.
lttlrck 9y ago
If more programmers would apply scientific method to their craft they’d engineer much better software.

by icc97 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

It's probably not too wrong. Software development unites a lot of things from science, engineering and craftsmanship. I guess we should stop trying to cram it into preexisting categories and take the best parts of each subcategory.

52-6F-62 9y ago

Well, there are definitely distinctions to be made, as in electrical and electronics work — I'm drawing crude lines here — An Electrician may be a master of his craft, but yet not an Electrical Engineer, who may be a masterful engineer but yet not possessing as deep an understanding as a Physicist, and so on. That said, the scale tips both ways. A physicist may know why and how an electron behaves a certain way within a material making up a resistor, but not have the practical know-how to use that in an effective way as an engineer might. An engineer might be able to hack together a prototype, but lack the refined master skill and discipline of an electrician to employ the designs and put it into a real world context on a regular basis. It goes without saying that you'll much more rarely see a physicist out in the field laying cable for power distribution in a new train station, etc. There's an old aphorism that leans into this a bit: "the wise things confound the simple, and the simple things confound the wise". I'm abusing that a bit, but still kind of works. I'm making a gross guess here, but maybe it's that science and engineering, in modern times, hold more of a lofty position and boast greater intellectual capacity traditionally, that so many would not want to be 'reduced' to a craftsman. We might do better to consider them just different aspects of the same whole.

lttlrck 9y ago

If more programmers would apply scientific method to their craft they’d engineer much better software.