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From: "Keith Shillington" <keith@sd.aonix.com>
Subject: Re: Software Engineering is not a hoax...
Date: 1997/06/12
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Date: 1997-06-12T00:00:00+00:00
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Ahem.  Amen.  Agreed.

In fact, I'd swing out onto the thin ice on the skinny branches and say
that to "code" more than that breeches the boundaries between software
engineering and, well, let's not mince terms here, hacking.  And, home is a
great place to hack.  I don't want to knock hacking.  I love to hack. 
There's something wonderful about tinkering, like writing HTML in VI; like
counting the number of clock cycles in a loop to see if some blindingly
fast operation can be made faster; not because it needs to be, but because
it can be.  This, on the other hand, tends to be inappropriate in an
environment where the software you (I, we) are writing ultimately will wind
up on someone elses plate to be maintained.

Robert Dewar pontificated:
| William said:
| 
| <<I'm what I consider to be a software engineer and I only spend about
| 10-15% of my time writing software.  The rest of it is to do with
| documentation, design, version control, project management, bug reports,
| etc etc.   At home though I'm a programmer!>>
| 
| I can only understand this if you replace "writing software" with
| "coding". To me documentation, design, version control, project
management,
| bug reports etc etc are an *integral part* of what writing software is
| all about.