Take it easy, am not crying! Its a pun intended intentionally for most of the people. You would like to ask what it actually means? Well read on…..
Software Engineering was the paper this semester in which every Tom,Dick and Harry scored more than he expected. Leave besides what this paper really meant, the teachers were also rich with marks and flooded the students. Naturally, everyone has high expectations in it and many even hoped of getting an A+ once in engineering.
Now my scene: I left the first sessional (no regretting) and then second. My internals were the lowest in the whole batch or at least among lowest. Means I dot know what software Engineering it and am very weak in it. Maybe I am,according to the Indian Education System. Whatever happened later doesn’t count. People got A+, majority A and I surprisingly got a B ( more than expectations).
Well the above two paragraphs was just to build the story’s climax,well its not a story anyway. Now working here at Microsoft on real time projects, I felt half of the things are not required at the earlier stage and more complicated things can be learnt gradually with experience. Have we been give any idea of Version Control Systems ? The answer is a big NO! I cant imagine developing a good software without a version control system.
Coming to some simple things. We had been told to document our codes, even the format of documenting was taught and any other way of documenting was prohibited (unless you wanted to lose marks). What happens here or anywhere, document the way you deem fit keeping in mind some standards. All companies have their own method of documenting codes. In a typical file, 2/3 rd of the content are comments.
My suggestion to budding coders and programmers is not to blindly follow the books as suggested by our Education System but think use the net to find out standards. We havnt been even taught how to file bugs. We had been taught testing, now what to do if we find a bug? ( Swallow it? 
) There is something called a bug tracker or Issue Tracker.
Concluding the whole article, I would like to say that you alone can make a big software provided you follow the standard methods like documenting, naming, intendation and some more software development concepts. In any way dont follow the Books blindly.
Ahem! I forgot one thing, most of the Engineers in my batch are preparing for MBA! Who wants to be a coder? Hard to figure out.
ecocycle2
