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Is 'Brogramming' Killing Requirements Engineering?

Posted by Soulskill on from the made-up-words-you-already-hate dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Veracode's blog has an interesting piece that looks at whether 'brogramming' — the testosterone- and booze-fueled coding culture depicted in movies like The Social Network — spells death for the 'engineering' part of 'software engineering.' From the post: 'The Social Network is a great movie. But, let's face it, the kind of "coding" you're doing when you're "wired in"... or drunk... isn't likely to be very careful or – need we say – secure. Whatever else it may have done, [brogramming's] focus on flashy, testosterone-fueled "competitive" coding divorces "writing software" – free form, creative, inspirational – from "software engineering," its older, more thoughtful and reliable cousin.' The article picks up on Leslie Lamport's recent piece in Wired: 'Why we should build software like we build houses' — also worth reading!"

5 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Brogramming??? by Bigbutt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can we fucking kill this meme right now?

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
    1. Re:Brogramming??? by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Judging from some of the roofers I've known, drunk would be exactly the way to "build software as we build houses".

    2. Re:Brogramming??? by AwesomeMcgee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You forget the other part of the equation, the corporotocracies where they have BA staffs that don't write requirements either, I guess MBA's are above all that work mumbo jumbo and just hang out while telling the devs to do something useful without giving us any bloody specs at all ever. It's not just startups that are running without requirements, it's the entire industry anymore. I don't know why, this used to be a given expectation of a dev's job that they would get requirements, but I guess somebody at some point decided we could just generate wealth for our masters without the slightest bit of input at all.

      I guess it doesn't help that enough of us are smart enough to actually do just that, but still, it's bloody annoying!

  2. Never seen one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hollywood's doing as good of a job portraying programmers as they have every other aspect of technology. I've never seen this 'brogrammer' in the wild. I don't doubt that there may be small, isolated pockets of them but it's not exactly the cancer that is killing the industry.

  3. Depends on the product by cs668 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you was your time upfront and someone beats you to the market, who cares about the engineering!! If you capture the market for a new idea you can use a more formal process for v2 while your competitors missed out.

    If you are building my pacemaker, then lets be formal from the start!!

    Seems, dumb to make a one size fits all statement about hacking out some code vs. engineering.