Programmer vs software engineer
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I dont have a business card and it wasnt a question about titles, it was a question about mentality.
So when you say "So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer" that's not putting a title on yourself/what you do? Okay then, keep going, work hard and you might get there one day.
Installing Signature... Do not switch off your computer.
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
IDE operator
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Based on how many coders don't seem to have any idea about SysAdmin or Ops work, I completely disagree.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Benjamin Disraeli
So, what's wrong with SysAdmin and Operations? Why does it have to be "DevOps"? Oh, that's right, it sounds cooler. :doh:
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eh... I'm whatever the job description says. Just tell me the technologies used and the pay scale. Call me whatever you like, just don't call me late for dinner.
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
Code Monkey?
Someone's therapist knows all about you!
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I usually introduce myself as a geek. When talking to non geeks. In a company of other geeks I say I do development. I try to leave it at that. Some days I am a strict coder. Some days I am an architect. Some days I am the customer. Most days I am just keep politics from ruining mine and my teams lives. As someone else said. I don't really fit into the current buzzword. I also don't want to be labeled by a buzzword. I can do design work, I can meet with the customer and come up with an overriding solution. I can be put in a corner and given specs and crank out code.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
Geeks are circus performers.
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
Everyone at the current gig is called a "software engineer". I don't really care much for titles - I just enjoy getting paid to play with computers all day.
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So when you say "So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer" that's not putting a title on yourself/what you do? Okay then, keep going, work hard and you might get there one day.
Installing Signature... Do not switch off your computer.
Lopatir wrote:
what you do
Write kernel code for windows and linux. The most important part of this is the design, the architecture, because if that is wrong the product will never fly. The details, the syntax, I often have to look up, because I keep forgetting it. It is usually because my head gets so deep into complex relational behaviour between components that it just can't hold the bits and pieces for any longer than it needs to.
Lopatir wrote:
you might get there one day
Been doing it for 20 years and get paid very nicely for doing so thankyou! :)
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Everyone at the current gig is called a "software engineer". I don't really care much for titles - I just enjoy getting paid to play with computers all day.
It wasnt a 'title' question, but a 'what sort of person are you' question. Either a detail obsessed bit stuffer, ie, programmer, or someone with the wider big view, the designer (which is what I do and regularly make a mess of live coding tests because I use calc to verify all my bitwise logic and google to look up the syntax of the stuff I, regularly, forget. :)
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It wasnt a 'title' question, but a 'what sort of person are you' question. Either a detail obsessed bit stuffer, ie, programmer, or someone with the wider big view, the designer (which is what I do and regularly make a mess of live coding tests because I use calc to verify all my bitwise logic and google to look up the syntax of the stuff I, regularly, forget. :)
Munchies_Matt wrote:
'what sort of person are you'
Nice
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
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So, what's wrong with SysAdmin and Operations? Why does it have to be "DevOps"? Oh, that's right, it sounds cooler. :doh:
Sorry for my late reply ... the term has been around for about 10 years, and this is a good summary of its history (https://www.ca.com/us/rewrite/articles/devops/a-short-history-of-devops.html) I guess it depends on many aspects whether or not it is useful. In my case (a senior developer in a SME) it serves well its purpose to describe what I do :) , BR
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Munchies_Matt wrote:
'what sort of person are you'
Nice
R. Giskard Reventlov wrote:
Nice
I think we should vote on that. :laugh:
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data. There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
It's the holes in the roles that I play that make, or break, my day.
«While I complain of being able to see only a shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is now, since I'm not at a stage of development where I'm capable of seeing it. A few hundred years later another traveler despairing as myself, may mourn the disappearance of what I may have seen, but failed to see.» Claude Levi-Strauss (Tristes Tropiques, 1955)
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
Software Engineerings tell you what to do, Programmers need somebody who tells them what to do and sometimes how to do it. ;P
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
I have 58 reasons to code - to bitcoin a phrase
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
After graduation I joined an aerospace engineering firm on their graduate training programme. A 2 year period of courses, working in various departments in the company, and honing my software skills. My mentor told me on day 1 "you think you're a good programmer, which you probably are, but you're not an engineer, we're going to train you for that", I thought "what does he know?" I learned so much. Programming is actually a much smaller part of software engineering. It's about the application of rigorous standards and processes to whatever you do, while applying a formal set of constraints. It's the ability to flow down system requirements to individual testable functionality, and tracing that all the way through to final acceptance. I spent 3 years in the systems engineering department. This was a collection of individuals with various specialisations; mathematicians modelling scenarios, and developing complex algorithms, for example. I worked on bid prep and requirements gathering and analysis. Meeting stakeholders and identifying their user requirements, then translating these to system and functional requirements, to be flowed down to software engineers, while also creating the associated test framework so that each requirement could be tested, and the whole thing formulate a system acceptance process. Much of my time was spent using software like DOORS. Subsystem interfaces and dependancies were probably the most challenging part (software eng. can be thought of, in it's purest form, as developing a series of interfaces). As I became more senior, I became a graduate mentor, for what was now a 4 year graduate training programme, leading to CEng. I remember using the quote my mentor used above for each of my graduates, and guessed they thought exactly the same as me when I was a graduate. I've met many developers who think they're engineers, and they just hack some code and knock up a bit of documentation (slight exaggeration there). Process never enters their mind, and that's he most important part of engineering. Engineering in the UK is not really recognised as one of the professions, which is bizarre. It's fixed up with technician, or mechanic. In the US, I believe you have to be registered. I worked for some time with a German firm, and there, they are considered a proper profession. My father's best friend was a successful architect, and said that in many countries, engineers are revered more than architects. In Germany, if you are introduced to somebody as an engineer, they'll want to
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:( Could be.
Happens to all of us. I'm in my fifties now, and Google, stack overflow, and text books are open constantly as I work. Still got all me own teeth, tho'. :)
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I continually have to check the details of syntax and stuff when programming. Things like print format specifiers, the syntax of things I havent used for a year or so, and use a calculator to work out bit masks and check my bit wise logic. I can never get it right in my head. I dont remember details. I dont pride myself on that. I spend my time and energy on the big picture. Designing and understanding complex mechanisms. The architecture. The guts of the machine. So I think of myself as a software engineer, not a programmer. How about you lot?
