Let me be specific: I believe that the source code is the design. Compiling is the manufacturing. Engineering is, what, measuring the tensile strength of a stable quicksort algorithm?

I think it is a serious mistake to equate code with design. Granted, an agile methodology intermixes design and coding in an iterative and mutually informing process, and the final code (and documentation) may be the only tangible artifact produced, but that still does not mean the code *is* the design.

As for engineering, yes there certainly is engineering in software development, running the gamut from the ad-hoc or experiential engineering that any builder / tinker / craftsman etc might display, to algorithm analysis, to the design of language features that increase assertions of correctness (within particular domains of correctness).

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Programming Versus Engineering by Anonymous Monk
in thread (OT) Programming as a craft by revdiablo

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