So little actual software development in software engineering roles

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 6:30 AM, Stephen Adler <adler-wRvlPVLobi1/31tCrMuHxg at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> For those of us who have lots of grey in our hair, this is an unsettling
> situation. I've always wondered if such a group could come together and
> work on a project for profit. Cell phone apps, stock trading software,
> social networking plugins, what ever.. Or maybe one could form a
> "boutique" software development group. I once worked for a start up in
> Boston making a medical device. A software company in Canada was going
> to charge the company 1.5 million for developing some imaging software
> which I didn't think should cost 1.5 million, maybe several $100K.
> Furthermore, the Boston start up charged a Japanese company 1 million +
> for some software development which would have taking maybe several
> months of two to 3 guys who know how to code complete. Is it just a
> question of organizing such a group and advertising the groups
> services?....
>
> On 01/09/2011 11:01 PM, Mark Woodward wrote:
> > I have been looking around for positions having had my last project
> > canceled. I'm so tired, it seems like "software development" is more
> > "software integration" these days. Maybe I'm old and washed up. I don't
> > know, but jeez, I LOVE writing software. I mean, I love it. Problems
> > wake me up in the middle of the night with rapturous solutions. I mean,
> > seriously, I don't care what kind of software I'm writing, just be
> > something that does something.
> >
> > In the past few years, I've kept in touch with various high profile
> > colleagues, hoping against hope that something interesting would show
> > up. Sadly, no.
> >
> > Venture Capitalists should no longer have the initials VC, it should be
> > more like "vC." I know times are tough, but the whole VC deal is
> > supposed to help you develop a product. The new deal is that you more or
> > less have to have it developed. Worse than that, it needs to be fully
> > buzzword compliant. While this is not an entirely new thing, it has
> > become much worse.
> >
> > Then, don't get me started on cloud computing. I mean, really, "cloud"
> > computing. Talk about a buzzword. OMG then there's SaaS! None of these
> > things are rocket science, and in many ways, they offer really powerful
> > solutions to previously difficult or expensive problems, but not
> > everything NEEDS to be cloud based. SaaS is a billing model, not an
> > architecture, just ask skype.
> >
> > Lastly, for various reasons, I'm a generalist. That means I have a
> > pretty wide exposure with some really deep experience in a few areas
> > like low level C/C++ and OS stuff (Windows, Linux, BSD). I could write a
> > book on the various programming issues: threads, processes,
> > synchronization, memory management, I/O, DMA, compilers, algorithms,
> > pseudo-AI expert systems, databases, SQL variations, optimizations, and
> > on and on.
> >
> > What's the point?
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> >
>
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The BostonPHP meetup group proposed a idea which might be good for people in
this group too.  They talked about anyone in the group coming to a meeting
with an idea or two.  The large group might split into a few smaller groups
to develop a few prototypes, then out of the prototypes maybe develop full
blown apps that they could make into commercial products.

-matt