The 3 Faces of Software Development

By Colin White

Three types of software development are out there: The Pretty. The Plain. The Ugly.

Consider the first. Nearly all fresh-faced, budding developers are attracted to software design and new development. It's exciting, fresh, forward-looking and full of optimism and idealism. It's unencumbered with the baggage of heritage, legacy and accidental unspoken complexity. It's the attractive one in the room that everyone wants to dance with. When you're this desirable, you're selective with your dance partners, choosing those skilled in the latest steps and hottest moves. The average, the mediocre and the mundane look on in envy and wonder when they'll grow up and get to dance with a cutting edge and frankly sexy, design-and-development project.

But for the majority of software developers, particularly the shy and introverted, a plain-looking maintenance-and-sustainment project is a more-than-acceptable dance partner. Despite furtive looks around the room for a more attractive partner, they focus on maintaining the rhythm and quality of the software maintenance dance. It's well known, predictable, linear, finite and comforting. Doing what you know best in a pattern that's familiar while avoiding unnecessary risks or unwanted attention. So it may not be the most attractive work out there but it's still critical, challenging and intellectually stimulating. And besides, it's great to be wanted as part of a team.

It takes a special kind of software engineer to choose the ugly dance partner. What surprises most onlookers is the caliber and experience of developer that actively seeks out the ugly dance partner. The inexperienced and naive might gossip, “how much better they could do!,” not realizing the intellectual challenge involved in software system integration. It's not simply the marrying of disparate systems, because anybody can do this. It takes a special engineer that can make it look elegant, seamless, effortless, as if the two objects were always conceived with this in mind. It wants a deeper interest into system personalities, their quirks and their heritage. Software integration is cerebral, intellectual and so much more than skin deep.

Without all three facets of software development, the dance floor would be empty and the world a very dull place.

Colin White is vice president for software development at CHR Solutions. He previously served as CTO chief architect for large and small companies including SAIC, Fujitsu, and GNS Europe in London, Hong Kong and the U.S. White has founded and sold successful IT businesses including GNS Europe. He also has an extensive technical background in enterprise architecture, high performance computing, enterprise storage, data communications and systems engineering, and has served as technical peer review for NASA’s Chief Technology Officer on information architecture. White holds a bachelor’s degree in IT from University Kent at Canterbury and a master’s degree in information engineering from City University, London.