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Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#3
I like this list. It's also missing "debugging". That's a skill that they don't emphasize in college because they can't test it and it's hard to teach. But there are ways to teach it and techniques. There are some books on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484290410/

https://www.whyprogramsfail.com/

That can mitigate that a bit.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#5
There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility.

I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#6
Some more:

The worst are when you run into code that’s been around for a long time, but obviously doesn’t work, but which have stuff built on top of it relying on it not to work.

When two bugs manifest together in one symptom, the engineering approach that you have learned about breaking a problem down and testing one thing at a time, might not be enough to find the issues.

All projects are chaos, learn to accept that and to navigate it.

Centralising things into common classes, methods, functions, libraries, modules or services, for reusability, and for less redundancy, also increases risk, as it is now even more important that that stuff works.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#7

I like this list. It's also missing "debugging". That's a skill that they don't emphasize in college because they can't test it and it's hard to teach. But there are ways to teach it and techniques. There are some books on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484290410/ https://www.whyprogramsfail.com/ That can mitigate that a bit.

Why can't debugging be tested?

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#8

There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility. I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “one sided culture of professional responsibility”?

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#9
I had never seen that cartoon about the "dream job" before, but it's something I've thought about so many times as I've listened to people talk about their dream job or dream employer. It always struck me as strange to dream of labor / dream of being an employee - must be a cultural thing.

Re: Things they didn’t teach you about software engineering

#10

There is nothing wrong with this article in trying to paint a realistic picture of what is expected of a software engineering nowadays but man am I getting tired of this one sided culture of professional responsibility. I just don't vibe with this advice anymore, like all the same with me but I'm gonna call myself something else then, you can have it.

Whoever wrote this hit the enterprise koolaid a bit too much, you're meant to sip not swallow.

Calling SWE "working in IT" is where it lost me.

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