đź“ťThere are no boundaries in software development

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§ Software Development #insight List of dualities

All software development is the same. The boundaries between management, testing, programming, design, copy, and marketing are imaginary. There are no boundaries in the real world.

This is a subset of the larger List of dualities topic.

Here is a list of “edge cases”—something different people may judge differently (or wouldn’t even know how to judge):

  • functional/non-functional requirements

    • sometimes non-functional requirements are functional. e.g., for a hard real-time system, the timing requirements are a function

  • software / hardware

    • firmware

    • microcode

    • is software flashed into ROM becomes a hardware?

    • ROM is actually re-writable nowadays

    • FPGA allow programming the hardware architecture

    • one of the first programming was done with wire jumping

    • software is designed an extension of hardware (configuration of hardware)

    • many features are possible to implement in either hardware or software

    • it is theoretically possible to implement any software entirely in hardware (given big enough hardware)

    • what is software anyways?

    • Hardware description languages (Verilog/VHDL) are very similar to programming languages (functional, reactive)

    • there is a Haskell-based eDSL for hardware description (you literally write haskell)

  • hardware / physics

  • digital / analog electronics

    • digital electronics is based on analog one

    • np-pn gates

    • wire length introduces timings which are not traditionally(?) described in digital electronics

  • design / psychology

    • design heavily draws from psychology

    • many design researches are literally psychology researches

  • software architecture vs design

    • architecture is highly subjective

  • language / library

  • language / package manager

  • language / editor

    • visual programming languages

    • structural editors

  • language runtime

    • even C has runtime library (crt0) (usually)

  • DSP/embedded

  • debugging/adding features

    • “bug” is itself subjective. What one considers a bug, another considers a feature

    • a bug that requires a substantial rewrite

  • testing/programming

    • TDD

    • reproducing an issue to debug

    • quickly checking how app works after implementing a feature

    • complex project require tons of testing code. E2E testing is quite a chord and requires non-trivial amounts of programming. Is it still testing or is it programming?

    • CI?

  • requirements/testing

    • BDD (proper)

    • test cases/use cases

  • design/programming

    • interactive prototypes

    • when I implement an app without thinking design upfront, am I a designer?

    • a programmer adjusting design to allow easier implementation

    • a designer doing html markup? markup in JSX?

  • design/marketing

    • user interviews

    • problem discovery

  • management/-

  • programming/infrastructure

    • local infrastructure? if it is complex and involves clusters (though, local)?

    • automating deployment

    • CI/CD

    • creating installers/packages?

    • when executing shell commands becomes programming?

  • programming/configuration

    • using header files for configuration

    • using shell files for configuration

    • using python files for configuration

    • awesome wm (lua configuration)

    • xmonad (haskell configuration)

    • NixOS (Nix configuration)

  • design/copywriting

    • when design copy becomes a standalone copywriting

  • marketing/sales

    • marketing is thought of as an input to sales

    • it is so hard to separate them, that Denis Dovgopolyi recommends having one KPI for both of them.

    • when sales communicates with the potential customer, they can discover what customer wants, so they can fuel the feedback cycle and actually dictate how product should look like.

  • How design blends together

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