Maybe I’m just not good enough at paying attention, but for me it seems like you have to actually run into problems over and over and figure out how to avoid the problems. Then you end up being able to mentally simulate what problems you will run into, and design is basically all about avoiding future problems of various kinds (and balancing tradeoffs about which future problems to avoid and how much effort to put into each, whether you can solve multiple with one design play, etc).
I have this too, I have never been able to "do exercises" or "study a codebase". I need to be making something that I am excited about, then I'll learn, from examples, from wanting to be thorough and correct.
But sometimes I think I'm just not their yet, if I become able to read code like a book and really understand what happens, which often I don't, then perhaps I'll enjoy the process more.
That's how I learn as well. I've found that reading code is a completely different thing from learning. Not even tangentially related.
I can read a codebase and run simulations in my head. But this almost never results in learning anything. I can study code and see how a particular task is done, but I don't learn it until I put it into practice. Just about the only thing I get from reading other people's code is the most egregious ways to not do something.
This is a pretty common thing, a plurality of humans learn this way. We just have different standards for software, for some reason. We like to pretend books teach you something more "real" than just getting your hands dirty and writing some real fucked up code. But the reality is that figuring out why your disaster code doesn't work, and then fixing it is one of the most educational experiences a programmer can have.
> for me it seems like you have to actually run into problems over and over and figure out how to avoid the problems
This shows how immature the field of software engineering is. Imagine bridges or houses were built like that. Or your surgeon was trained like that.
Over time, we hopefully develop estblished norms, but at the moment, things are too much in flux. Put 5 sw engineers in a room, pose a problem and you will get not just 5 different solution proposals, but there will likely be strong disagreements on which approach is a good one.
"I recognize a good solution when I see it" is just not good enough for a serious engineering discipline.
> Imagine bridges or houses were built like that. Or your surgeon was trained like that.
While I don't disagree with you in general, this does feel a bit off.
By that logic you can call the field of music immature, and all of the arts. I think the difference is that its easy to experiment without high costs.
I genuinely think that if building bridges was cheap and quick, the fastest way to learn was to try...
I generally agree with your point on ease of experimentation, but if we insist on calling it software engineering, then maybe the field needs to adhere to engineering principles, as the GP highlighted.
I believe part of engineering isn’t over-engineering for the task at hand as well. If the costs of a “failure” are low/zero then the right thing can be to move quickly expecting some problems.
I think the field could get better at knowing when costs are low (eg sometimes scalability, cheaper to change a database choice than rebuild a bridge) and where the costs are sometimes very high (eg security).
Notice OP says "software design". Design is still an art, even in mechanical engineering.
Engineering applies to looking at a design and proving something about it.
The term "design" is ambiguous here.
When design is a process to build something pleasing (like in music or painting), then yes, it's an art, and you can rightfully have different opinions about outcomes, sometimes diametrically opposed opinions, which is all not just fine and accepted but inherent in the field and a required ingredient.
When design is about building something functional, then it's part of engineering. You can objectively measure whether it does satisfy the requirements. That's where serious engineering disciplines are and where software engineering needs to aim for if it wants to keep engineering in its title without getting laughed at. As long as programmers consider themselves part artists, that's hard to achieve, but as the field matures, there is hope.
Note that some fields are trying to be both. For example architecture. There it's solved by making a more or less clear distinction between the pleasing art part (that's what the architect does) and the functional engineering part (structural engineer). Both roles are not being conflated. In software, we still do that.
> Imagine bridges or houses were built like that.
Bridge building is a lot more conservative when it comes to taking risk in the construction, but that is how we build bridges and lots of bridges collapse because of similar causes:
An average of 128 bridges collapse annually in the United States. More than 17,000 bridges in America are considered "fracture critical" (vulnerable to collapse from a single impact).Engineering doesn't mean all processes are flawless and surely not that all humans participating are perfect.
The collapsing bridges in the US are mainly caused by insufficient maintenance, which is not an engineering problem but a political one. And the vast majority of collapses happens with bridges that are known to be unstable and already blocked for traffic. The engineering part did that, as if it screams "told you so" at the politics which doesn't allocate sufficient funds for maintenance.
> Imagine bridges or houses were built like that
If they could afford experimenting and have a few bridges collapse before they get it right with no significant negative consequences IMHO it wouldn’t be the worst way to learn.
Maybe even more so for surgeons, being able to experiment and fail in a risk free environment seems like a good thing.
> This shows how immature the field of software engineering is. Imagine bridges or houses were built like that. Or your surgeon was trained like that.
It's not that software engineering is immature, it's just more dynamic.
We are not the surgeon, we write the surgeon. We write a surgeon to fix a broken leg. Once that is done, we don't have to fix another leg. Now we need to reattach a finger. Once that is solved, maybe replace a kidney.
You cannot repetitively train or have strict rules for that, because every time it's something new. You need to have broad knowledge and experience to be able to fight the next unknown challenge. It's unknown because it's never been done before, or it has been done but your competitor will not reveal the details.
Building bridges or being a surgeon sounds very boring to me, since it's always the same (maybe some minor variants). Building software? Very much not the same.
Most swe is just crud
> This shows how immature the field of software engineering is. Imagine bridges or houses were built like that.
You're forgetting a key difference between software and the physical world.
The blessing and curse of software is that there are few constraints on the solution so it can take an enormous number of different forms and still be valid. There isn't gravity, friction or the various other things that constrain physical solutions.
And each of those almost limitless solutions has different trade-offs related to a large number of different variables. It takes many many years of seeing the different impacts of those design decisions across the different variables within the constraints of different domains and contexts.
It's truly a combinatorial problem with so many dimensions that no human is smart enough to just simulate the impact of design decisions in new and unfamiliar domains+context.
You could argue that there could be standard ways of doing things within specific domains+context, but the context is so varied between companies, and business priorities have so many differences that I don't think it's a solvable problem.
The best we can do is have higher level patterns and approaches to specific types of problems that can guide people based on others experiences, but all of that still needs to be mixed and matched for the specific problem space.
I agree with your assessment and didn't say it's easy. If it was then we'd already have solved it.
But that doesn't mean it can't be solved. I'm sure 150 years ago people said something similar about flight. Not a great analogy, but the point stands that if we keep working on it and have a goal then in a few decades we could get closer to actual engineering than the mess we are in today.
For me, software design is more comparable to business system and organization design. It’s just that instead of humans executing the processes you design, it’s machines doing it.
I don’t think business system and organization design is approached like bridge design either, is it?
Also, bridges, houses and surgeons can physically kill people if something goes wrong. Software that can physically kill people, such as that in airplanes or missiles, is actually treated quite differently from most software, I think? I don’t have experience in those industries those so I can’t comment on the specifics of how is it different, but my impression is that things are a lot more rigid. Business organization design also can’t directly kill people.
In general, I think that there is a fundamental tension between looseness and flexibility of operations and innovation. If you are super rigorous and have set in stone best practices, it is going to be harder to find new ways of doing things that work better.
I’m not really bothered if people don’t consider software to be a serious engineering discipline. I’m not sure I do either. If someone wants that kind of thing, I’d recommend they go into a different engineering discipline, rather than trying to make software like that.
Tell me you don't know the first thing about engineering without telling me...
This is the engineering process. If you put five engineers of any discipline in a room, you will get five different answers. Every contractor and architect has their own ideas about how things should be done.
Furthermore, we do build houses this way, even in the modern age with building codes. The builder is going to do whatever they can get away with and this is a universal truth. The only reason bridges are held to such high standards is because of the monetary cost of a collapse.
The "norms" are not what you think they are. They're tradition, they're "we've always done it this way". What you're talking about are laws written for public safety. Those laws only exist because we tried and failed to do things a certain way and the cost in money or lives was untenable.
> "I recognize a good solution when I see it" is just not good enough for a serious engineering discipline.
You're conflating engineering with science. A scientist will rigorously test and validate, but a huge part of engineering is just recognizing a good solution. Of course there's a lot of testing and validation in engineering as well, but not with the kind of rigor you're implying.
That's kinda like saying you can learn to drive by just getting into a car, crashing then thinking about how not to crash it next time.
In reality both things are necessary. The car analogy doesn't hold for road driving because we drive well within the limits, but for racing it really is necessary to know exactly where the limits are. I don't think we should really be treating our profession like a race, though.
But if you don't read it's going to be an incredibly long slow process and a lot of car crashes and mangled gearboxes etc. So I say read, read, and read some more. Even if you don't see the point of it right now your experience will later find a place for it and you won't end up descending a hill for the first time not knowing to shift to a lower gear.
>That's kinda like saying you can learn to drive by just getting into a car, crashing then thinking about how not to crash it next time.
That would be a perfectly valid way of learning to drive if crashing had no danger or destruction and you could instantly reset the car every time. Software is a special case of engineering where the cost of failure is extremely low, so trial and error is generally the fastest way to get going with actually doing something.
It would be an incredibly inefficient way of learning anything. You might as well say you could just rediscover all of human knowledge by just observing the world and doing your own experiments. Turns out standing on the shoulders of giants tends to get you further.
you mention a key point. profession. programmer doesnt really imply professional programmer.
I'd aay if you do it for a living, certain tedious chores must be learned. the best programmers i know (professional) can all read code. they spent many junior years learning to read it, being on code auditing desk.... nowadays idk how the landscape looks, but for all of them they had to review and read code to find bugs before they were allowed to produce code (they all worked at same company ofc... so my view is limited!)
i do feel such discipline is needed. they can always poke holes on my code no matter how many holes i plug :) - i am semi professional. i write code for work, but not production code. (experimental). i never learned to audit code and feel that makes it impossible for me to truly create production grade code
This is pretty much how I've learned up to this point (and will of course continue). Trying to learn from real world code will be a new experience for me. Not sure how valuable it will be but should be fun either way.
This is it