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I'd argue software engineering is still too hard for software engineers.

by zcw100 5y ago

LadyCailin 5y ago
I think industry and society just has too low a bar for software development. If the quality of civil engineers matched that of software engineers as a whole, we’d all be dead from the collapsed buildings and bridges. Of course, software isn’t usually such high stakes, but I don’t think it would hurt the industry to have some formal licensing. If you write a terrible API or whatever, then a review board decides if your license to practice should be removed. The field would suddenly get better, as developers would no longer care about the PMs artificial deadline, if they need more time to write quality code, they will take it, and the PM simply can’t find anyone else to cheap out on the work either. Now, how you enforce this, I don’t know, but this is my pie in the sky dream.
- qazpot 5y ago
  Your suggestion is extremely laughable and naive and reeks of elitism. The domains where the quality of code has very high stakes do have very strict processes and have an extremely high bar. The domains where the stakes are not high, for ex - implementing an API to download user reports, have a very low bar. And your point about cancelling the license to code if you implement a bad API, that's like cancelling a journalist because they made a typo in their article and it went out.
- neura 5y ago
  I hear what you're saying. I would argue that review boards, licensing, etc are only relevant because of the stakes. How to enforce it becomes irrelevant if you can't sell anybody on the idea that it's important in the first place. Even the strength of your statement "...I don't think it would hurt the industry to have..." doesn't sound like something that any part of government would be willing to get behind. There's just such a huge leap from "decisions civil engineers make can kill. people" to "decisions software engineers make can annoy people". Still, you're not wrong that the field might immediately get better in some ways, but I believe we could also go down a lot of paths that would lead to the widespread concept of "stifling innovation so that people are less likely to be annoyed by buggy or hard to use software". I'm sure there are also much stronger arguments in favor of your idea of a better world when you narrow the scope down to specific types of software or use cases.
neura 5y ago
I'm sure there are plenty of quotes out there that are very similar to this, but kudos in stating what most of us (software engineers) already think, with such clarity. I laughed. I cried. I remembered that this is never going to change. ;)

I'd argue software engineering is still too hard for software engineers.

by zcw100 5y ago

I'd argue software engineering is still too hard for software engineers.

I think industry and society just has too low a bar for software development. If the quality of civil engineers matched that of software engineers as a whole, we’d all be dead from the collapsed buildings and bridges. Of course, software isn’t usually such high stakes, but I don’t think it would hurt the industry to have some formal licensing. If you write a terrible API or whatever, then a review board decides if your license to practice should be removed. The field would suddenly get better, as developers would no longer care about the PMs artificial deadline, if they need more time to write quality code, they will take it, and the PM simply can’t find anyone else to cheap out on the work either. Now, how you enforce this, I don’t know, but this is my pie in the sky dream.

qazpot 5y ago
Your suggestion is extremely laughable and naive and reeks of elitism. The domains where the quality of code has very high stakes do have very strict processes and have an extremely high bar. The domains where the stakes are not high, for ex - implementing an API to download user reports, have a very low bar. And your point about cancelling the license to code if you implement a bad API, that's like cancelling a journalist because they made a typo in their article and it went out.
neura 5y ago
I hear what you're saying. I would argue that review boards, licensing, etc are only relevant because of the stakes. How to enforce it becomes irrelevant if you can't sell anybody on the idea that it's important in the first place. Even the strength of your statement "...I don't think it would hurt the industry to have..." doesn't sound like something that any part of government would be willing to get behind. There's just such a huge leap from "decisions civil engineers make can kill. people" to "decisions software engineers make can annoy people". Still, you're not wrong that the field might immediately get better in some ways, but I believe we could also go down a lot of paths that would lead to the widespread concept of "stifling innovation so that people are less likely to be annoyed by buggy or hard to use software". I'm sure there are also much stronger arguments in favor of your idea of a better world when you narrow the scope down to specific types of software or use cases.

neura 5y ago

I'm sure there are plenty of quotes out there that are very similar to this, but kudos in stating what most of us (software engineers) already think, with such clarity. I laughed. I cried. I remembered that this is never going to change. ;)