Why do some programmers think there is a contrast between theory and practice?
- by Giorgio
Comparing software engineering with civil engineering, I was surprised
to observe a different way of thinking: any civil engineer knows that
if you want to build a small hut in the garden you can just get the
materials and go build it whereas if you want to build a 10-storey house
you need to do quite some maths to be sure that it won't fall apart.
In contrast, speaking with some programmers or reading blogs or forums
I often find a wide-spread opinion that can be formulated more or less as follows: theory and formal methods are for mathematicians / scientists
while programming is more about getting things done.
What is normally implied here is that programming is something very
practical and that even though formal methods, mathematics, algorithm theory,
clean / coherent programming languages, etc, may be interesting topics,
they are often not needed if all one wants is to get things done.
According to my experience, I would say that while you do not need much
theory to put together a 100-line script (the hut), in order to develop
a complex application (the 10-storey building) you need a structured
design, well-defined methods, a good programming language, good text
books where you can look up algorithms, etc.
So IMO (the right amount of) theory is one of the tools
for getting things done.
So my question is why do some programmers think that there is a contrast
between theory (formal methods) and practice (getting things done)?
Is software engineering (building software) perceived by many as
easy compared to, say, civil engineering (building houses)?
Or are these two disciplines really different (apart from mission-critical
software, software failure is much more acceptable than building failure)?
