Introduction
Programming is kind of fun, but developing quality applications or software is very difficult. It depends on requirements, vision, problem solving capabilites, implementation, skills, and technical understanding of an engineer. A software engineer is responsible to learn and apply the principles of software design, development, maintenance, testing, and quality code.
But, unfortunately, there is a group of software engineers who never believe in all the principles and design of software development, technical skills, etc. They do the label changes of a textbox and feel proud by calling themselves Software Engineer.s The famous writer "Martin Fowler" tells about such kind of engineers -
"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."
I spent one day with these types of text box label changer software engineers. So, I will explain their behavior, attitude, quality, and skills in this article.
A Day with a software engineer who changes Text box labels only
I spent one day with a group of software engineers who don't belive in software development principles, design and learning technical skills. They are proud of doing text box label changes only. Their ignorance to all these things in software development brings the bad product or application or project to life. It impacts others also, in manys ways.
Features of Label Change Engineers:
I observerd the below features of label changing engineers.
They write Spaghetti Code
They don't understand the software design and development principles. They never focus on code quality because all these come from a good understanding of sofware design. So, they write only spaghetti code. It is called spaghetti code because it is twisted and tangled. They spoil the existing code also during the times of maintainence.
They write a Big Ball of Mud
They never know and belive in what kind of software architecture is being developed with the help of good software design principles. So, they develop a software architecutre that is called a Big Ball of Mud, because their architecture lacks a sensible or perceivable mechanism. This concept believes in an anti-design pattern.
They always spend their programming life in Technical Debt
According to Wikipedia:
"Technical Debt is a concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution."
It happens due to lack of knowledge, poor technical leadership, lack of collaboration, etc.
They believe in Software Bloat
They develop and enhance software or application in such a way that successive versions of that application become perceptibly slower and slower, and consume more memory. This term is called Software Bloat. And, the users who use this kind of software and never realize it are called Bloatware.
Bus factor is applied with them
"Bus Factor" is a term or concept which states - "The minimum number of team members that have to suddenly disappear from a project before the project stalls due to lack of knowlegeable or competent personnel." It is also called lottery factor.
Their tags in Code
Their code will be full with below tags:
- FIXME : It means code should be corrected.
- HACK : It means a workaround in the code.
- TODO : Their most favorite tag. It means something to be done in future.
- UNDONE: It means rollback of previous version code.
- XXX: One label changer programmer warns another label changer programmer about a problematic code.
- UX: User Experience.
They are the Stack Overflow Bot
Suppose they have to make a label color either red or bold. They quickly run into Google search, find the solution over Stack Overflow, and copy-paste-run the code. They never apply thinking skills. That's why they are called Stack Overflow Bots.
They are the protesters
They believe in the blame-game theory. Suppose, their tester raises some issue and the product owner or scrum master asks any of them, their reply will be like below.
- It is not my problem.
- This problem is not related to my code.
- I did not do this.
- This is not related to my fix.
- This looks very bad.
I observerd the above points while sitting with them, in a day. There might be many more points. Please be careful not to mingle with them because they are the ememies of your skill growth, high thinking, good productivity, etc. They will put all the above rubbish into your mind.
Conclusion
I was surprised to see all these qualities in them. They are really poor in technology, thinking, design, and quality. They do only label changes but try to highlight more and more. They believe usability is a four letter word only, dislike learning, and avoid curiosity and never behave well with others. They are very dangerous for your career, so please investigate them before joining their company.