Originally Posted by DannyV

You're engineering software not developing software. You learn how to improve it, how to find mistakes, different development cycles and paradigms, etc.

why would a company hire someone who knows how to engineer software but not the syntax of the language used ?
and different languages will have slightly different ways of doing things right?

Originally Posted by sagar

why would a company hire someone who knows how to engineer software but not the syntax of the language used ?
and different languages will have slightly different ways of doing things right?

we know how to learn the syntax and apply our knowledge to the problem at hand. Whereas a developer may be able to program in X number of languages and not able to adapt to new ones. I hope that makes sense.

Originally Posted by sagar

why would a company hire someone who knows how to engineer software but not the syntax of the language used ?
and different languages will have slightly different ways of doing things right?

Because any monkey can code. That's why we have all these awful, awful POS (pieces of software) out there with numerous bugs and issues. Just because you know the syntax, doesn't mean you know how to do it right. Yeah you may get the program up and running but is it optimized at all?

Also, engineers are taking on more project management oriented positions. As an engineer it is more likely you will be expected to run a team/project than do coding. I would say its is more of a 60/40 split if not more. 60% of your time managing, 40% of your time coding. Knowledge of syntax does come in handy, but that's just a matter of memorization and becoming familiar with the language.

Engineering software (or anything else for that matter) is where the brains come in.

Originally Posted by DannyV

Because any monkey can code. That's why we have all these awful, awful POS (pieces of software) out there with numerous bugs and issues. Just because you know the syntax, doesn't mean you know how to do it right. Yeah you may get the program up and running but is it optimized at all?

Also, engineers are taking on more project management oriented positions. As an engineer it is more likely you will be expected to run a team/project than do coding. I would say its is more of a 60/40 split if not more. 60% of your time managing, 40% of your time coding. Knowledge of syntax does come in handy, but that's just a matter of memorization and becoming familiar with the language.

Engineering software (or anything else for that matter) is where the brains come in.

I think I see what you mean. It's easy to recreate a program a lot of the time in a different programming language. Programming is the end result of the whole thought process.

So what I'm guessing is that we are more focusing on how to make programs efficient (i.e. learning algorithms like the different types of sorting, how to apply math to get rid of ridiculously long loops, etc).

Am I right?

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

So what I'm guessing is that we are more focusing on how to make programs efficient (i.e. learning algorithms like the different types of sorting, how to apply math to get rid of ridiculously long loops, etc).

Am I right?

Exactly. A lot more important than doing the coding.