TEERA 2.0: Technology blog

I read Scott Hanselman and Dare Obasanjo’s old blog posts a while ago about things they learned about software while and while not in college. Now that I’ve got my degree and started working full time for a while it’s time to reflect upon what my three things. Though I’m counting the freelance and internship experience as my college experience.

Three things I learned about software IN COLLEGE

1. Programming is only a small subset of software development. People often think of software development as writing code, but in a software project, the amount time spent on writing code is small. Most of the time is usually spent on deciphering other’s code, fix bugs and get your words across to other developers.
2. Developing software, like designing a building architecture, is as much an art as it is a science.
3. You usually get 20% of a project done with an entire semeter time. The rest 80% usually get done at 3AM the day you  hand it in.

Three things I learned about software WHILE NOT in college

1. You can neither judge a developer by how much he knows nor how much code he can churn out in a limited time. Knowledge can be acquired given time and effort. A good developer is the one who can come up with an optimal solution that performs best against its objectives under a given context and constraints.
2. 95% or more of the projects you’ll be working on in your career are going to be brown-field. Being in a project from the get-go is a privelege not many can afford.
3. You have to update yourself more often than your computer to stay relevant.

So that’s my three things, what’s yours?