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Lone Star Ruby Conference 2010 Real Software Engineering by Glenn Vanderburg

Confreaks · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software practice, open source & careersPython, Ruby & scripting languages

What it is

Glenn Vanderburg argues at Lone Star Ruby Conference 2010 that university-style software engineering does not work, and asks what real software engineering would look like. He revisits the waterfall model and what engineering means in other fields.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it for changing minds about whether programmers can be called engineers, and for its take on how waterfall was misread.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2013, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk”

    Explains what engineers actually do and why programmers qualify.

    yesenadam, 2020-05 · Strong recommendation · in “The most prized degree in India became the most worthless”

  2. “a very good exploration of how some of the common beliefs in the field of software”

    Explores where software engineering went wrong and what real engineering looks like.

    KaeseEs, 2013-04 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?”

  3. “which is a pretty decent analysis on how people misinterpreted the original concept.”

    Analysis of how the waterfall paper was misinterpreted.

    gcandal, 2016-01 · Recommendation · in “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems (1970) [pdf]”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: waterfall, engineering discipline, software process, agile, conference talk

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