Comments by "TheEvertw" (@TheEvertw) on "The Difference Between Developers u0026 Software Engineers" video.

  1. Often it is necessary to work through the happy flow first because it is not totally clear what you need to make. In those cases, working through edge cases and failure modes is a waste of time. True engineers often do this as well. First make a Proof of Concept, then properly engineer the product. I find that SW projects far too often skip the PoC phase, leading to disaster. PoC comes before MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
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  2. I remember a nice article by Jack Ganssle on the need for watchdogs. He describes a system that was crashing all the time yet continued to perform as desired because of a good watchdog. In fact, the customers never knew the system was buggy.
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  3. Real engineers often have a Proof of Concept phase where they do not care about failure modes or edge cases. A Proof of Concept is used to remove the technological risk / uncertainty from the project. The lessons learned in making the PoC are used to plan and develop the final product. The PoC itself is thrown away. It is a waste of time & effort to go through failure modes etc while still in the PoC phase. SW engineers would do well to adopt this as well. Far too often SW projects fail because there is still a lot of uncertainty & risk, both technical and in user interaction. If that is the case, FIRST built a PoC with a minimal team. If you scale up a team while there is still a lot of risk & uncertainty, the project is most likely to run over budget or fail outright.
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