Software Engineering Is Cool, But Is It Interesting?
Software engineering has always had a strange reputation. From the outside, it looks extremely cool. Tell someone you are a software developer and, if they are not in tech, there is often a small moment of admiration. You can almost see them imagining green text scrolling across a black screen while you break into a satellite. For a long time, I probably believed some version of this too. But the longer I work in software, the less cool the actual job seems to me. I should be careful here. Software is still a great profession. It is difficult in a way that is hard to explain to people outside it. You can spend twenty years getting good at it and still regularly discover things that make you feel like a beginner. So I am not saying the job is easy. I am saying something slightly different. I am not sure it is that interesting. At least not compared with some other professions. ...