Bulldozer00's Blog

In “Learning Standard C++ as a New Language“, Bjarne Stroustrup gives a slightly different take on the waterfall method of software-intensive system development:

“… treating programming as merely the handmaiden of analysis and design doesn’t work either. The approach of postponing actual discussion of code until every high-level and engineering topic has been thoroughly presented has been a costly mistake for many. That approach drives people away from programming and leads many to seriously underestimate the intellectual challenge in the creation of production-quality code.“

If your company implicitly treats software engineers like “code monkeys” and great engineers strive to “rise” into coveted management positions ASAP because the unspoken ethos is that “coders” are interchangeable cogs, then your company most likely has made costly mistakes in the past and it will most likely do so again in the future.