How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What is the difference between software engineer and software developer?
How to move from Programmer to Project Lead

Writing code all your life is not really very practical in terms of growth or is it? I have heard professionals of the industry emphasizing upon focusing on UML and System Analysis & Design methodology to new and experienced programmers to grow further and excel to become a Software Engineer. Communication skills also play a vital role to manage teams and projects.

Seeking for some good advice here besides learning UML and SAD.

Answer 1

Software engineering is an incredibly broad field. It encompasses the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) - requirements, architecture and design, construction, testing, and maintenance. It also includes project-level topics such as project management, process methodologies, and engineering economy and financial decision making. People-related topics, such as communication and team dynamics are also important to software engineers as no major software systems are built by individuals. Societal impacts of software, ethics, professionalism, and law are (to varying degrees) also included in software engineering.

Being an engineering discipline, software engineering is rooted in mathematics (especially discrete mathematics), statistics, and computer science. When it comes to constructing software, a knowledge of algorithms and data structures, performance, and complexity often come into play.

Because software is found in so many areas, there are also numerous domains of knowledge. These could be aviation, defense and intelligence, banking, commerce, and so on. In order to interface with the people buying and using the software, a software engineer typically learns a good deal about one or more of these domains as well.

So, what does this all mean? No one person is ever going to know everything about software engineering. There's just too much. A well rounded software engineer is going to understand the SDLC, going to be a team player, and have communication skills. A good software engineer will also have a grasp of professional conduct and ethics. After that, it's mostly specialization, typically in both a domain as well as a subset of software engineering.

If you want to move into systems architecture and design, learning UML, System Analysis and Design, and good architectural and design principles are a good start. But if all software engineers were architects and designers, there wouldn't be anyone to specialize in requirements engineering, or software construction, or managing software-intensive projects.

My recommendation is to find your niche and continually work on developing your skills and knowledge both in that niche, while maintaining an understanding of other aspects of software engineering and developing the generic skills.

Also, as an aside, depending on your location, you need to be careful about the use of the term "engineer". In parts of the United States (Texas and Florida come to mind), Canada, and Europe, the title "engineer" can only be used by certain people under certain conditions.

Answer 2

Writing code all your life is not really very practical in terms of growth or is it

It can be. I've been writing code all my life, relatively speaking. My first programming job was in the 80's and I'm still writing code to this day, by choice. My title in the past has been programmer, engineer, systems analyst, architect, but all along I've pretty much done nothing but programming. That changed a little when I became an architect, where only about half my time is spent programming.

I don't use UML and I don't really do "systems analysis" in the traditional sense. I don't consider myself an "engineer" even though that's been part of my title sometimes.

I am a programmer. I've made this happen by a) being good at coding, and b) only seeking out jobs that supported my goals. For the most part that means working for small, young companies with small programming teams that value skill over degrees and certifications. I've gotten to work on some very interesting projects, and I make a pretty darn good living.

In my experience it has been very rewarding spending my whole career as a coder, and I've had plenty of opportunities for growth (for my definition of "growth", anyway).

So, figure out what you really want to do with your career and become good at doing that. If you do what you love and you're good at it, "growth" won't really matter, it will come naturally as you gain experience and maturity.

Answer 3

Education and Practice

There are a couple big differences between a programmer and a software engineer and those differences are still being debated. Personally, I think that the biggest difference is that the programmer is given a defined task and are expected to implement it (i.e. write a log-in page) where as software engineers are given a general objective (i.e. develop an e-commerce site for a store) and are expected to ensure that the result not only fulfills the objectives, but also is stable and secure as well. Making the jump ensure that you need a fair degree of education in order to learn how to best approach larger systems. Likewise, education also ensures that problem areas are known to you before you start working on the project - or after someone else finds them - so you can address them early on in the design process.

While you can make the progression from a programmer to a software engineer over time through practice without formal education, you will still need to do work independently to learn what you would otherwise be taught in a classroom. The best way to make the progression on your own is to challenge yourself to work on larger and larger projects or to requires larger and larger pieces of the overall picture. Likewise, recommended books for software engineering also tend to be a good place to start as this comes back to what one of the core parts of education is in some cases - someone else telling you their mistakes so you don't do the same.

You are correct that communication is a big deal when it comes to taking the lead on larger projects, so you need to be comfortable what are typically very complex ideas to an audience that may range from inexperienced to significantly more experienced that yourself. This is something that comes with practice and where taking a course or two in public speaking can be a good idea as they typically force you to stand in front of the class and present multiple reports. Additionally, clubs such as Toastmasters are also good because they give you a safe place to practice your public speaking skills so you are confident with them before going before a team meeting.