CST438 - Week 1

CST438 - Week 1

What did you think Software Engineering was about before you started this course?  After the first week, in what way has your concept of Software Engineering changed?

Before this week, if I had to guess what the average development cycle for a product looked like, I would have described something that looked similar to Agile. I would have guessed that the early stages of a large software project don't look anything like the finish product. That you first prototype out each function or feature on it's own. Once that prototype is working, you then iterate on that to create another prototype that can work with another disparate feature. You continue this process until you have all planned features sharing data and functionality with each other. 

I would have predicted fast, small, but consistent iterations and improvements until you eventually have a full-fledged piece of software.

After this week, I started to appreciate the gravity of major software releases and how they influenced the process of development. Since it was not possible make tiny improvements and updates to software over the internet, feature and update releases had to include all promised features which had to work efficiently and reliably. Instead of focusing your development on achieving a minimum viable product, development starts from the "top-down", where every feature and interaction has to be considered, anticipated, and addressed in your program.