Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [professionalism]

21 questions
72
votes
37 answers

How to handle people who lie on their resume

I'm conducting technical interviews to fill a few .NET positions. Many of the people I interview really do know .NET pretty well, but I find at least 90% embellish their skillset anywhere between "a little" to "quite drastically". Sometimes they…
Juliet
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8 answers

Should I expect my team to have more than a basic proficiency with our source control system?

My company switched from Subversion to Git about three months ago. We had weeks of advance notice prior to the switch. Since I'd never used Git before (or any other DVCS), I read Pro Git and spent a little time spinning up my own repositories and…
Joshua Smith
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38
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5 answers

How to code review without offending other developers

I work on a team that does frequent code reviews. But it seems like more of a formality than anything. No one really points out problems in the code for fear of offending other developers. The few times I've tried to ask for changes were met with…
ConditionRacer
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37
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15 answers

Should I continue my self-taught coding practice or learn how to do coding professionally?

Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained.…
G1i1ch
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36
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5 answers

Is it appropriate to have positive comments in code reviews, or is it exclusively for constructive criticism?

I have been doing a lot of code review lately, and I am unsure of the positive and negative effects and professionalism of putting positive and/or funny comments in code reviews. We use Github as our code review platform on my team, so the comments…
Codeman
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7 answers

Is it ethical to use personal code at work?

I am working on a side project at work where I find it beneficial to use some of my code that I have developed personally (outside of work) to speed my development. My side project is developing a C++ GUI application to let our power users run…
CodeBlew
16
votes
16 answers

Is software development an engineering discipline?

Can software development be considered engineering? If no, what are the things that it lacks in order to be qualified as an engineering discipline? Related to this is this question on Stack Overflow about the difference between a programmer and a…
Vaibhav Garg
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14
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9 answers

What are the worst things that inexperienced developers forget to think about?

As a young developer, I would find it useful to get some advice regarding things to think about in order to develop a high-quality application. In my college courses, most teachers emphasized input validation and some talked about security concerns,…
awmckinley
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12
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9 answers

Do professional software developers still dream of creating industry/world-changing apps?

I'm a hobby programmer. The absence of real world deadlines, customer feedback, or performance reviews leaves me free to daydream about having and implementing The Next Great Idea That Changes the World. Of course I'm aware I probably have a better…
Drew
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11
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4 answers

As a programmer, are you professionally obliged to offer ongoing support after you've left a company?

I've had a few programming jobs in the past where I was the only developer working on a project. After I've left, I typically get several emails a week from these companies, usually from the developer(s) who's replaced me there. These emails are…
Matt Harrison
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10
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4 answers

How can I convince a team member to use a web framework?

The question is this and the detail follows: is there anything I can say/bring up, as a programmer, to bring him to my side? I'd love to hear valid arguments for both sides on this one, but mostly suggestions for how to talk him around. My…
Andy Hunt
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9
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2 answers

How do I explain that we're wasting developer time adding unnecessary features?

So I've lead the charge with my fellow engineers to, at the very least, start "thinking" Lean. We hit on a few major areas of waste, and 2/3 lead to the exact same point..."Extra Features". We dogfood our own software on two fronts, sales and…
Sean Lindo
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8
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5 answers

Can a unit test replace works-on-my-machine when completing work?

I've made a small change to an integration component and have prepared unit tests to cover my work. All new and existing unit tests are passing. It will take a substantial amount of time to configure and run the component locally as I will need to…
LazyCoder
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3 answers

Hallmarks of a Professional PHP Programmer

I'm a 19 year old student who really REALLY enjoys programming, and I'm hoping to glean from your years of experience here. At present, I'm studying PHP every chance I get, and have been for about 3 years, although I've never taken any formal…
Scotty C.
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3 answers

Is it ethical to adopt other programmer's algorithms?

Imagine I find a completely new algorithm to compute the square root of a binary number (simplification of real scenario) on an internet forum that was an original creation. Is it ethical for me to adopt that algorithm into any future projects of…
Drew
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