Real software engineers…
- Real software engineers don’t read dumps. They never generate them, and on the rare occasions that they come across them, they are vaguely amused.
- Real software engineers don’t comment their code. The identifiers are so mnemonic they don’t have to.
- Real software engineers don’t write applications programs, they implement algorithms.
- Real software engineers don’t program in a language that doesn’t have recursive function calls.
- Real software engineers don’t debug programs, they verify correctness.
- Real software engineers like C’s structured constructs, but they are suspicious of it because they have heard that it lets you get “close to the machine.”
- Real software engineers admire PASCAL for its discipline and spartan purity, but they find it difficult to actually program in.
- Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an undocumented external procedure.
- Real software engineers like writing their own compilers, preferably in PROLOG.
- Real software engineers regret the existence of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC. PL/I is getting there, but it is not nearly disciplined enough; far too much built in functions.
- Real software engineers aren’t too happy about the existence of users. Users always seem to have the wrong idea about what the implementation and verification of algorithms is all about.
