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December 13, 2003

Define "software developer"

Ben Trott's post, Software Development and Usability, over at SixLog:

Movable Type (and TypePad) is, and has always been, jointly developed by Mena and me, and she is every bit as much a "software developer" as I am... it's much easier to see "programming" as driving a product than "usability" or "architecture", but in reality, a poorly-designed product is just as unusable as a buggy one... one of the reasons that Movable Type is so popular is because the product combines element from both Mena and me. And I don't know if it's a female-male combination or if it's just the combination of our personalities, and frankly it really doesn't matter.

Posted by Gina at 08:13 PM in Software | Permalink

Comments

A person who only has UI design credentials is not a software developer. He/she is an artsy/fartsy type.

Being a programmer is a necessary component of being a software developer (you're developing *software*, not *UI*) but having further qualifications may place you above competing job applicants in certain cases.

Posted by: Julius at Dec 13, 2003 9:18:51 PM

I think this is a matter of semantics. The person who wrote the article was probably using "software developer" to mean "software programmer." It's no question that Mena works in software development, but if developer means programmer, then she may not be one.

Posted by: Lilly Tao at Dec 14, 2003 1:06:23 PM

As a software developer I have always thought
that programming was implied, but apparently some
think differently. That's news to me so I can see
how the author of the article may have been confused.


Posted by: meg at Dec 14, 2003 11:03:27 PM

Apparently, Ben's using a more holistic filter to view the development universe. He's also being a tad oversensitive. One would think the journalist impugned his wife's character or something.

I understand what he's doing -- he wants to be sure Mena's contributions are viewed as equally important as his, by all who include them in their articles. Great. They're a team and should be always be recognized as such. But if that's truly the case, he needs to use his own language a bit better to communicate this.

What Ben means is that Mena's just as important to the MT development process as he is. What Ben said was that Mena does the same thing he does, which is not true. As I understand it, Ben's the coder and Mena's the designer. Yes, both roles are critical to the success of an application, but they are not interchangeable. They are complementary, not one and the same.

So, really, the argument of whether programming is what defines a software developer is irrelevant. The real issue is "can software developers communicate effectively?" Judging by Ben's post, I'd say he's got a ways to go yet.

Posted by: Jenny at Dec 15, 2003 12:26:21 AM

I thought Ben's post was pretty articulate. It got me to thinking, anyway.

Posted by: Gina at Dec 15, 2003 10:19:00 AM