Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

Re:Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer... by amelius on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @04:40AM (#19622876)

I think the problem is mixing terminologies:

• Programmer: glues together existing tools (your example)

• Software engineer/architect: builds/designs systems that can handle large loads efficiently; invents and applies techniques so the systems can become large while keeping them maintainable

• Computer scientists: invents and analyzes algorithms

That said, roles are usually mixed up as well, where a computer scientist in industry can easily spend 90% of their time programming.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer... by dnautics on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @05:44AM (#19623142)

I would say a true software engineer is someone that can design a system to meet a SLA, write documents which systematically show how it's measured and specced. Most software 'engineers' (including all but one of them with that title in my company) are just 'devs'.

My feeling is that a software architect is someone who can design something to try to meet an SLA but is too lazy (or too high level) to actually check it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer... by kitsunesoba on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @06:02AM (#19623221)

Most positions I've worked sit somewhere between 1 and 2, involving quite a bit of glue but a good chunk of design work as well. Had there been no design component (glue alone) the produced software probably would have been functional in the strictest sense but would also have been a slow buggy mess.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer... by fouc on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @05:31AM (#19623094)

Not really a mixing of terminology considering that the scientists/engineers are only going to be a small proportion of the coding population.

[ Parent | on HN ]