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This comment (and the sibling one by eastbayjake) should be higher up responses, in my opinion. It seems like a lot of people in this thread are interpreting "m

This comment (and the sibling one by eastbayjake) should be higher up responses, in my opinion. It seems like a lot of people in this thread are interpreting "most software is plumbing" to be pejorative. Plumbing is not a high status job, but I don't think that's a charitable interpretation of the comparison. The other interpretation is that most software engineering work doesn't require significant theory or novel work. Implementing software solutions to theoretically resolved problems still requires skill. Likewise plumbers very rarely do novel design work, but that shouldn't be a judgement of their skill. I think the statement, "most software is plumbing" is true insofar as most software developers need design novel solutions. There are existing frameworks, libraries and languages for the vast majority of business needs. That kind of maturity is a good thing.

alexanderdmitri 8y ago
Well to clarify my initial comment, the article uses the word "just" to qualify the comparison: The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 is Just Plumbing In my opinion it's a bit of a lazy analogy and the author doesn't show any real knowledge of what goes into plumbing or how this analogy provides any value. Software development is full of analogies that are designed to aid understanding of a large array of abstract concepts. This is good! I just don't see why this "software development is just more and more like plumbing" analogy has become so popular in the dev community. I get what they're trying to say, but it says more about how they perceive/approach their work than it says about either field. I feel like I could provide just as much value by taking all the points this author made, just replacing the word "plumbing" with "open-heart surgery", but everyone reading my article would be like what the heck? It's almost comical: The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 is Just Open-Heart Surgery Software is great because you tend to get out of it what you put in. The same is true about plumbing (please don't think about that too much ...). But that's not what these types of articles are getting at.

alexanderdmitri 8y ago

Well to clarify my initial comment, the article uses the word "just" to qualify the comparison: The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 is Just Plumbing In my opinion it's a bit of a lazy analogy and the author doesn't show any real knowledge of what goes into plumbing or how this analogy provides any value. Software development is full of analogies that are designed to aid understanding of a large array of abstract concepts. This is good! I just don't see why this "software development is just more and more like plumbing" analogy has become so popular in the dev community. I get what they're trying to say, but it says more about how they perceive/approach their work than it says about either field. I feel like I could provide just as much value by taking all the points this author made, just replacing the word "plumbing" with "open-heart surgery", but everyone reading my article would be like what the heck? It's almost comical: The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 is Just Open-Heart Surgery Software is great because you tend to get out of it what you put in. The same is true about plumbing (please don't think about that too much ...). But that's not what these types of articles are getting at.