2017-02-26 - Computer Engineering is Weird

Computer engineering is weird compared to other engineering disciplines. Engineers mainly work on the design part of a project. They come up with specifications that get approved by the client and then sealed by the engineer to indicate that they are ready to be used. Then the plans are given to other people who construct the project under the supervision of the engineer. In computer engineering there is rarely a separate build time or a complete specification. This is largely because programming is both harder and easier than other disciplines.

Building a program is a fair bit easier than building other things. Maybe not in terms of complexity but at least in terms of resources and personnel. You need carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters and many other trades people  along with wood, wiring, piping, and heavy equipment to build a house. In contrast you just need programmers and computers to build a program. Programming teams also tend to be a lot smaller compared to construction crews.

On the other hand designing a program can be quite complicated. There tends to be a large number of distinct parts of a program which can interact with each other in a variety of ways. These parts can also be created and destroyed many times throughout the life-cycle of the application. Modeling these details in a simple way can be almost impossible. There's also the problem that the design and implementation of a program can be very similar. A specification is a set of instructions that describes how something should be built but a program is also a set of instructions. So it becomes difficult to write a specification that is detailed enough to be useful but not too detailed that it's basically the program written in another language.

Because of the ease of building a program and the comparable difficulty of designing teams will often skip the formal specification in favour of just building the program and the program becomes its own specification. Since the main focus is on building the project there's no need for a separate design group or a formal approval processes. Specifications are going to be created and used by the same people and change as the program is developed and details get fleshed out.

Now likely computer engineering would benefit from having more formal specification and approval processes but it requires tools specificity designed to make it practical to do so.