In 10 words or less, what is software design to you?
At the end of a recent interview, the candidate asked me “What is software design to you?” I can probably come up with a thousand different answers but the one that popped into my mind immediately that day was “software design is making the ordinary extraordinary.”
Okay, so maybe it won’t get me a mention in Businessweek, but what I was trying to capture and communicate was that software design in particular is largely about taking unglamorous tools and making them functionally robust and efficient, rewarding to use, and aesthetically pleasing. We aren’t artists, but we are creatives. We aren’t rocket scientists, but we’re smart and talented. And every day we have to use our creativity, smarts and talent to design the best tools for people to use.
So I’m interested… in 10 words or less, what is software design to you? Enter more than one if you like (as separate comments).
In 10 words or less, what is software design to you? http://bit.ly/Q7aCo
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"it's about making someone's life simple"
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Software Design for me is an extension of human sensitivity
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"Pretending it all fits in your head, and winging it."
Because deep-inside, we are prima donas convinced we're smarter than almost everyone else, and most certainly too good to follow boring proper design that would require writing down the structure of our code to a level of detail sufficient to actually guarantee to an external observer that the logic is sound before the first line of code is written.
Because we don't act like engineers one bit, but we like wearing the title anyway.
And you know what? We get away with it. Because for all the new graduates being pumped out of schools worldwide, almost everyone of them is taught to perpetuate the sloppiness, so there won't be anybody to challenge us for a long time.
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"is the magic of making ideas and dreams reality"
The bridge between ideas and applications.
Solving a problem by removing complexity. And chicks, yeah chicks!
Software design is tending a bonsai tree.
In 10 words or less, software design is to me
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
Artistry
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
RT @russwilson In 10 words or less, what is software design to you? – Dexo Design – Russell Wilson’s Blog on UI Des… http://cli.gs/8EPXM
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Enforcing the Law of Least Astonishment.
Crafting a well-engineered software solution to a user's problem.
Software design is … trying to extend elegance into n-dimensions.
(Those dimensions are typically structure, simplicity, flexibility, functionality, neatness, robustness, cost, etc.)
I was reading some stuff the other day on "string theory" and cosmology where scientists were talking about an infinite number of parallel universes. In one universe, your swerve to avoid the deer is successful, in another, it is not. Maybe in some universe, your software design is simple but not flexible. So I'll offer another definition:
Software design is … making sure you are in the proper universe.
The stuff you don’t do enough and regret later. (That’s 10 words, right ?)
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
Making the computer do what you want.
Create a system model, abstract it to the user model.
Transforming the abstract into the executable.
-Ian
Software design is … creating a simple and elegant tool that improves someone's life
making the virtual real
Software design is a game where you try to improve upon pencil & paper
its transforming businesses with the dance of fingers
Making the computer do what you want.