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Software engineering is different from many other fields. You're evolving a product over a long period of time, each step has uncertainty and requires creativit

Software engineering is different from many other fields. You're evolving a product over a long period of time, each step has uncertainty and requires creativity and exploration, and you can change not just you process but the materials and tools you work with. It's tempting to find a simple metaphor to try and explain why technical debt matters, but if you ignore the things that make software engineering unique then you're probably not helping your case. Also, equating yourself to fast food workers is not a good way earn respect.

choeger 6y ago
I more and more think we should challenge that difference. IMO software engineering is bad in many ways because we lack experience. And we do lack experience because we do not repeat what we do. Most developers work on legacy code that is older than their own stint at the company. Yet, the constantly ship new features. That means they are constantly working as maintainers and producers in parallel. My suggestion would be to have dedicated producers and dedicated maintainers. And software should have a planned shelf life. You should buy a piece of software the way you buy a house. Huge up front investment followed by a long period of negligence interrupted by frantic maintenance efforts.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  We also insist that we're different instead of examining the lessons learned from related disciplines. Perhaps the closest to software engineering is systems engineering. They have a huge body of work that closely parallels what we've done in software engineering, along with many ideas on how to model and understand both our systems and our approaches to development and organization. But as an industry, we seem to want to make our own path, rather than learn from others.
- underwater 6y ago
  Many other field are constrained by the limitations of the physical world. To build a house you have to source the materials, transport them, assemble them, and so on. That's the bulk of the work. In software things of that nature can be automated. The only things left are the things that are custom to a project.
- haihaibye 6y ago
  When managing a team you also have to deal with human psychology and I've noticed that many get bored doing maintenance and want to leave their mark designing and building new things. We thus rotate maintenance/new and difficult and fun work based on the energy levels of the team.

choeger 6y ago

I more and more think we should challenge that difference. IMO software engineering is bad in many ways because we lack experience. And we do lack experience because we do not repeat what we do. Most developers work on legacy code that is older than their own stint at the company. Yet, the constantly ship new features. That means they are constantly working as maintainers and producers in parallel. My suggestion would be to have dedicated producers and dedicated maintainers. And software should have a planned shelf life. You should buy a piece of software the way you buy a house. Huge up front investment followed by a long period of negligence interrupted by frantic maintenance efforts.

Jtsummers 6y ago
We also insist that we're different instead of examining the lessons learned from related disciplines. Perhaps the closest to software engineering is systems engineering. They have a huge body of work that closely parallels what we've done in software engineering, along with many ideas on how to model and understand both our systems and our approaches to development and organization. But as an industry, we seem to want to make our own path, rather than learn from others.
underwater 6y ago
Many other field are constrained by the limitations of the physical world. To build a house you have to source the materials, transport them, assemble them, and so on. That's the bulk of the work. In software things of that nature can be automated. The only things left are the things that are custom to a project.
haihaibye 6y ago
When managing a team you also have to deal with human psychology and I've noticed that many get bored doing maintenance and want to leave their mark designing and building new things. We thus rotate maintenance/new and difficult and fun work based on the energy levels of the team.