Can I call myself a software engineer, without knowing the miniscule details of how .NET works?
I recently came across a blog post on dev.to saying that framework users are not Engineers, and we should be called "Frameworkers".
I am personally more interested in the business logic, rather than minuscule/,lower level details.
If there are imported packages and I know the input, and output. I can easily use it for what I want.
So, should I involve myself in the internals, or is it okay to just use the abstractions and adapt to it?
6 Replies
nah its ok, you are software engineer
its a software and you do some engineering with it
some internals are good to know if you want to be senior level game dev or embedded dev or dealing with massive paralelism, but for most cases (webs, apps) you dont need that
Okay, that's good to know. I was feeling like an imposter
i think all of us suffer from imposter syndrome
either i feel like the greatest developer of all time or like idk what im doing and don't belong, no in betweens
We've all been there somewhat, it's the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
And especially in a field like computer science the top of every mountain is the bottom of another.
I always make fun of those web developers whose only job is to build websites by clicking on some GUI builders and do a little of JS. - The worst part about it is that they self call them senior devs, engineers, etc. but they have zero clue how and why this all works.
However, software developing became somewhat very abstract, I would say, way too abstract.
Today nobody needs to know what a compiler is and how it works and following sequential method rules, etc.
People can just press
F5 in VS and the program is starting magically.
In my opinion this leads to a lot of problems.
I think, for instance, before using something like LINQ, one has to understand first what it actually is and does.
A few of weeks ago I had a discussion here on discord, about the XOR operator. I mentioned it and it's usage, also I was talking about logic gates, etc. and people said it's too much, or too deep knowledge and I confuse beginners with it. - Well, I think it's the opposite.
Once somebody knows the low-level stuff, at least to some point, higher and more abstract code becomes better.
So, it's a long long way. And I agree with the blogpost saying "framework users aren't engineers", well, most of the time.
Just ask yourself, do you become a better driver if you know how the engine and everything in the engine compartment works? - I would answer, yes.
But ask ten people and you'll get twelve opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯This fair, I feel the abstractions removed a lot of complexities in order to make development process easier. I personally don't have any problem, going to someone's source code and tweaking about. It's just that most of the time, all the demands are met. I think might be my lack of imagination since, I am a Mechanical Engineering graduate.