[baq]

Yeah it’s important to point out that programming is not software engineering is not computer science.

Computer science mostly requires a pencil and a piece of paper.

Programming is the act of making a computer do what you’ve written down on that paper.

Software engineering is figuring out what do you need the pencil for and once you’ve done it, making sure computers are doing what programmers think they told them to.

[bthallplz]

> Software engineering is figuring out what do you need the pencil for

Could you please elaborate on this? :)

[baq]

Programming is like 20% of senior+ software engineer time, on a good day. The rest is spent all sorts of communicating - emails, presentations, specs, docs, figuring out incidents, in general trying to make sure the team is building what should be built - or efforts which support the business and/or the team, like fixing or optimising CI/CD, monitoring, hiring, reviewing backlogs (note plural), mentoring juniors, helping out sales or support with customer issues, working with support of your service providers, etc. This is especially true in big orgs with many teams, in smaller ones you might see a bigger share of pure coding-related work depending on a week... or coding overtime because there simply isn't enough hours in a day to open the IDE normally and these guys still like to code something every now and then.

Computer sciency stuff is maybe 1% on a good year (obviously there will be exceptions depending on the products you're building).

[argiopetech]

SE is a project management discipline. CS is a logic/math discipline.

SE gets you to think about what the customer needs, what sort of performance or regulatory constraints may be in the loop, how you can design for teams and the future, etc (i.e., do you need a pencil or a pen, and how the factory is set up to make that happen at the rate and in the time required by the customer).

CS is about algorithms and logic, performance optimization, etc. It's the step where you build the machine that cuts the pencil blank, puts the graphite in, adds an eraser... and the conveyers/etc. that transfer the bits to the appropriate place for them to be useful.

[corytheboyd]

I would assume they mean gathering requirements, aligning with other team goals, etc. before picking up the pencil. Which I agree, is a huge part of “engineering” vs. “programming”