Craft, Engineering, and the Essence of Programming
summary
Argues that the old software‑engineering analogy is wrong: Jack Reeves (1992) shows the source code is the design, compilers fill the third slot, and economics are inverted so building and prototyping is cheap and favored over heavyweight upfront math. Illustrates with Eugene Ferguson’s DC‑3 pre‑rotation story and Douglas’s simpler solution, and with concrete tools — JUnit, RSpec, Cucumber, FitNesse — as executable specifications. Concludes programming sits at the abstract end of engineering and benefits from iterative prototyping rather than waterfall documentation.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:15Engineering misconceptions
- 8:51Engineering across fields
- 13:08Programming as engineering
- 17:43Source code as design
- 21:20Craft vs engineering
- 27:43Software models and artifacts
- 33:25Internal vs external quality
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