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#Management

Is Software Engineering Real Engineering? • Hillel Wayne • GOTO 2023

#Management #Leadership #Engineering #Software #Philosophy

It's speech Hillel Wayne He tries to answer the philosophical question: a software engineer is a trembling creature or has the right to be called an engineer.) This question came from quotes by computer scientists like Gerald Weinberg.

If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. On the subject of this quote, the author recalls leftpad.

To find the answer, the author went through surveys present Engineers who worked in software engineering at the same time and then arranged interviews with three questions.

I. Are we really engineers? II. How similar are we to engineers? III. What can we learn from each other?

  1. The first question led to the elucidation of the term "engineering", which had three answers: physical, consequential, licensed. Next, the author analyzes each item and gives examples, rejecting all hypotheses. The simple thing is that engineering is what engineers do. ("what engineers do"). Funny recursion:) The author is still following the approach.Software craftmanship", in which the authors tried to build from traditional engineering disciplines" (without understanding how they work).

  2. The author then proceeds to similarities between software engineering and traditional engineering fields. In the end, it turns out that Similarities: iterative, high degree of unpredictability, informality (Traditional disciplines are not always) Differences: the rate of change is fast in software and slow in traditional engineering disciplines, the presence of rigid constraints (Traditional disciplines are the laws of physics)Consistency - in the digital world, a correctly written program will work, and in the real world, performance depends on environmental conditions. (temperature, pressure, wind,) The differences are not critical here either.

  3. Well, last question. What we can learn from each other Here the author notes two points:

  • Up-front planning time
  • Responsibility It’s funny that everyone who designs APIs and contracts, a plugin system, or any as-a-Service product encounters this.

As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that if we want to call ourselves engineers, then no one can prevent us from doing this.)

#Management #Leadership #Engineering #Software #Philosophy