Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#61

Post by choeger » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

JohnWhigham wrote: post #51

lou1306 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, there are far fewer physical constraints in software, so the range of possible designs is dramatically wider. (Actually I dare say that sotware itself has no physical constraints at all: software artifacts and software executions do.)

Which is why I don't buy the "software has only been around for 70 years so give it time" argument. Software has nothing to be grounded in like other engineers do with physics. It's most likely always going to be endless cargo culting.

That's simply not true. Software is grounded in mathematics. Most people just try to ignore that fact for convenience.

There are, for instance, famous books written about which errors can be proven to be absent in your program and how (vulgo typechecking). There is a huge amount of research about data structures and their internal logic (and at least one, very weird observation about the meaning of the derivatives of data structures). And I don't need to mention complexity theory, do I?

Just because a huge part of the practitioners ignores the scientific base of our discipline doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#62

Post by NikolaeVarius » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #54

fitzn wrote: post #4

Steven Sinofsky gave a talk and said something to the effect of, we've been building roads, bridges and edifices for thousands of years. So, best practices and solved problems abound---and even then we still get it wrong sometimes. Whereas, software engineering is maybe 70 years old (generously)? So, there is much to learn and a lot of "baseline" knowledge that has yet to be established. I think it's a good way to th…

Also, there isn't that much in the way of scientific grounding. Mechanical engineering has physics as a foundation. Chemical engineering has chemistry as a foundation. What is the scientific foundation of software engineering? I suspect it is a mix of cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology.

Math. Which seems that many practitioners are proud of not knowing

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#63

Post by bdavisx » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

IIRC, the book Code Complete talks about best practices and contains links to studies when they apply to those practices. I might be wrong, it's been a while since I read the book and I can't get to it right now.

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#64

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

> My housemate the other day asked me something to the effect of “How can Software Engineers call themselves engineers when there’s no rules, governing bodies, or anything to stipulate what true Software Engineering is?”

There sure is, that is what countries that have Professional Engineering titles have.

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#65

Post by choeger » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #54

fitzn wrote: post #4

Steven Sinofsky gave a talk and said something to the effect of, we've been building roads, bridges and edifices for thousands of years. So, best practices and solved problems abound---and even then we still get it wrong sometimes. Whereas, software engineering is maybe 70 years old (generously)? So, there is much to learn and a lot of "baseline" knowledge that has yet to be established. I think it's a good way to th…

Also, there isn't that much in the way of scientific grounding. Mechanical engineering has physics as a foundation. Chemical engineering has chemistry as a foundation. What is the scientific foundation of software engineering? I suspect it is a mix of cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology.

How about math? Complexity theory, all kinds of logic, computational theory, category theory?

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#66

Post by optymizer » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #54

fitzn wrote: post #4

Steven Sinofsky gave a talk and said something to the effect of, we've been building roads, bridges and edifices for thousands of years. So, best practices and solved problems abound---and even then we still get it wrong sometimes. Whereas, software engineering is maybe 70 years old (generously)? So, there is much to learn and a lot of "baseline" knowledge that has yet to be established. I think it's a good way to th…

Also, there isn't that much in the way of scientific grounding. Mechanical engineering has physics as a foundation. Chemical engineering has chemistry as a foundation. What is the scientific foundation of software engineering? I suspect it is a mix of cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology.

Computer Science?

Edit: this is a discussion forum. The downvote button is not an agree/disagree button, it's to penalize irrelevant comments. If you'd like to disagree, please reply and state your thinking instead.

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#67

Post by edejong » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #54

fitzn wrote: post #4

Steven Sinofsky gave a talk and said something to the effect of, we've been building roads, bridges and edifices for thousands of years. So, best practices and solved problems abound---and even then we still get it wrong sometimes. Whereas, software engineering is maybe 70 years old (generously)? So, there is much to learn and a lot of "baseline" knowledge that has yet to be established. I think it's a good way to th…

Also, there isn't that much in the way of scientific grounding. Mechanical engineering has physics as a foundation. Chemical engineering has chemistry as a foundation. What is the scientific foundation of software engineering? I suspect it is a mix of cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology.

Well, if you make broad generalizations like that, then software engineering has mathematics as a foundation.

Perhaps you don't want to make broad generalizations?

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#68

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #34

fitzn wrote: post #4

Steven Sinofsky gave a talk and said something to the effect of, we've been building roads, bridges and edifices for thousands of years. So, best practices and solved problems abound---and even then we still get it wrong sometimes. Whereas, software engineering is maybe 70 years old (generously)? So, there is much to learn and a lot of "baseline" knowledge that has yet to be established. I think it's a good way to th…

Civil (and other engineering) got better because there was motivation to improve that came from multiple directions: literal lives at stake, the pride of good craftsmanship, iterative or even grand steps forward in knowledge, etc. Software engineering as a discipline is dominated by appeals to authority ("Clean Code", "Google does it this way", "Djikstra said so", etc.) without any (or at least not much) attempt to a…

What about we apply this to software engineering?

> If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver.

- Code of Hammurabi, 1755–1750 BC

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#69

Post by thereddaikon » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

"The parallel he drew was to another friend who’s a Civil Engineer. His friend had to be state certified and build everything to certain codes that stand up to specific stressors and inspections.

I gave him the usual answer about how Software Engineers deal with low stakes and high iterability compared to Civil Engineers, but, honestly, he has a point."

I've argued for awhile now that Software Engineering with a big E should be licensed and regulated the same as any other Engineering discipline. Not all software is low stakes and fast changing. In fact I'd argue the most important software is never that. software for control systems, avionics, cars etc are very high stakes and have no reason to iterate beyond what is needed to interface with changing hardware. I think if software engineers had to be licensed to work on such things then those 737s wouldn't have fallen out of the sky and Tesla wouldn't be allowed to beta test self driving cars on public roads.

To those who ask what do you now call software engineers who don't work on those things, you are programmers. Or if you prefer a less formal term, coders. Engineer is a powerful word and I don't like how the we the IT industry have appropriated it for less critical tasks.

Re: Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

#70

Post by agentultra » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

In some cases, perhaps, but the _state of the art_ is always evolving and a lot of it is informed by how people practice software engineering in the wild.

Professional Engineer is a modern concept. In the United States it started in 1907. Sure we have been building irrigation systems for thousands of years but it wasn't regulated by governments until recent history.

Until then it was a practice guarded by guilds and seen as a craft.

Software isn't without its own history. The mathematicians and logicians had been working on it long before the first computing machine was built. We've known how to compute values for thousands of years.

Are we still in the craft/guild phase of the discipline? I don't think so. There are professional engineering organizations around the world that are certifying software engineers. If that is all that is required you can apply today.

The missing piece is that it's not required by governments around the world to have any professional affiliation or certification to practice programming professionally. Some argue this is a good thing as it keeps the playing field level. Others argue its bad as it enables profit-motivated companies to cut corners that harm businesses and users.

But as far as best practices go, as long as there are enough people practising them across the industry, then it's not simply a preference. A good guide on this is the SWEBOK [0] published by the IEEE which attempts to catalogue these practices in a living document that gets updated as the state of the art develops.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Engineering_Body_of_K...