> Any "software engineering" that took place, if any, would occur before the first instruction is even written for a production system.
Great comment.
Designing a bus protocol or the C++ standard is definitely software engineering.
Programming is akin to trades like construction or production technicians. However, usually a software developer is involved in the design, implementation, production and maintenance whereas the former are only involved in last two.
That is because programming projects are subject to change in production. Waterfall is too slow for many businesses and the implementation winds up being a mess despite the linear workflow. Iteration is necessary to improve any design.
Exactly. Public safety is central to Engineering practice. Bridges and buildings come to mind but many life-critical software projects in aerospace, medical devices, automotive, also have emphasis on safety. The development process is way more controlled in embedded industries compared to web/IT/enterprise.
Even Google and financial services are really just services that scaled and acquired a massive userbase.
“Software Engineering” is really just an application of civil engineering project management to programming projects. The job title of software engineer is used too liberally however.
This is true for tweaking and was certainly true for industrial automation.
However the danger is if you cut human input/involvement altogether. That is what AI will be if successful. Everyone except the business owner will be uninvolved (apart from futile protests).
It is honestly the same in tech. The idea/product guy is still there and so are the people piecing it together. But the people in the middle: task masters, documentation writers, manual testers, etc are always being automated away.
The middle jobs are under attack.
Future jobs will just be feeding the AI til it no longer needs us.
Majority of Excel jobs I have seen in regulated industries are because people use the tools that they are familiar with for everything. Do you really need a spreadsheet to generate reports? Project Management Tracking? Timesheets? Task Lists? Calendars and Schedules?
The majority of the jobs people do are updating crap in spreadsheets that don’t need to be there. If it weren’t for SOPs and audits, this stuff could be wiped out easily.
The only protection for these office workers is the status quo and inertia to change. Excel provides some task automation but still requires recurring human input and maintenance. The new wave of AI does NOT.
Great comment. Designing a bus protocol or the C++ standard is definitely software engineering.
Programming is akin to trades like construction or production technicians. However, usually a software developer is involved in the design, implementation, production and maintenance whereas the former are only involved in last two.
That is because programming projects are subject to change in production. Waterfall is too slow for many businesses and the implementation winds up being a mess despite the linear workflow. Iteration is necessary to improve any design.