Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster
By David Farley
I studied computer science at university and completed several modules called “software engineering” or variations on the name. I was unfamiliar with programming when I started my degree and had already implemented a fully working inventory system for my high school’s Career Library. I remember being extremely confused by “software engineering.” It all seemed designed to get in the way of writing code and delivering an application. When I graduated early in this century, I worked in the IT department for a large car company. As you’d expect, they were big on software engineering.
I saw my first (but certainly not my last!) Gantt chart, and it’s where I experienced waterfall development. That is, I saw software teams spending significant amounts of time and effort in the requirements gathering and design stages and much less time in implementation (coding), which, of course, overran into testing time and then the testing…well, there wasn’t much time left for that. It seemed like what we were told was that “software engineering” was getting in the way of creating quality applications that were practical to our customers. Like many developers, I felt there must be a better way.
Genre: Computers
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David Farley
Dave Farley is co-author of the award-winning book ‘Continuous Delivery’ and a contributor to the ‘Reactive Manifesto’.
Biography.
He has been having fun with computers for over 30 years. During that period, he has worked on most types of software, from firmware to tinkering with operating systems and device drivers to writing games and commercial applications of all shapes and sizes. In recent years, Dave has worked in the low-latency systems field and contributed to the Duke award-winning ‘LMAX Disruptor’ open-source project. He started working in large-scale distributed systems about 25 years ago, researching the development of loose-coupled, message-based systems, a forerunner of today’s micro-service architecture. He has a wide range of experience leading the development of complex software in teams, both large and small, in the UK and USA.
Dave was an early adopter of agile development techniques, employing iterative development, continuous integration, and significant levels of automated testing on commercial projects from the early 1990s. He honed his approach to agile development in his four-and-a-half-year stint at ThoughtWorks, where he was a technical principal working on some of their most significant and challenging projects. Dave is currently working as an independent software developer and consultant.
David Farley
