Software Engineers - The Third Kind of Person

Posted by Jamie Smith

Well, school started back last week. I'm back to learning all the things that universities think are important. It's interesting (and a bit frightening) when you get a job out in the "real world" and realize that much of what you learn in school isn't directly applicable. However, you do learn great principles and perhaps more important, you learn how to learn.. quickly.

In the field of Computer Science, things change rapidly. New technologies are constantly released that make a developer's job easier. Ironically, it's difficult often times to keep up with these technologies.

Anyway, as I stated, I'm back in School for my master's in Computer Science. One of the interesting classes that I'm taking that I find really interesting is Advanced Software Engineering. If you had asked me a year ago about the different types of people involved in the development of a computer program or system, I would probably have told you that there are 2 kinds. The visual designers* - who are the artsy people (ie Daniel) who make sure things look good and are presentable, and the developers - the ones who write the code and make it work. However, I think there is a third kind of person - the Software Engineer.

The Software Engineer is the one who architects the project, generates the blue prints if you will. In a corporate atmosphere, it's best to have a team of people who come up with the requirements for the software, design it on paper using UML, think through it, and have a full functioning idea of the final result before coding even begins. This is the nature of good software design. How simple it is to forget this key step, but I've come to realize that in a project, these are often the most important ones. Software without a design is like spaghetti. It's really messy. Although spaghetti does taste really good, so maybe that's a bad example, but it's the one often used.

I almost thought about switching my degree plan over to Software Engineering rather than CS, however, it will be pretty difficult to finish by the end of the year if I tried. It's still a possibility of course, but it's a decision I'd have to make pretty soon.

Posted August 25, 2008 4:14 PM