This editorial was originally submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald in response to an editorial proclaiming that people wanting to become software engineers should not attend university and instead learn a current popular programming language.
Over the past few years I’ve developed software for large corporations, started the Vodafail campaign, co-founded Mijura and represented Australia in the global Robocup (humanoid robotic soccer) competition. I graduated from University of New South Wales School of Computer Science & Engineering this past year with a Software Engineering degree accredited by Engineers Australia. I am technically a Software Engineer, but what does that mean?
Engineers learn to design and build complex systems, sometimes without specific requirements or clear constraints. They mull over the tradeoffs of design, the conditions under which a system might fail and how to properly ensure that it doesn’t. This is the job of any decent engineer, regardless of tools or discipline and it is exactly what I learnt at university. We also learnt about industry and an internship in a software company was required to graduate.
My co-founder at Mijura, Prashant Varanasi, studied Computer Science. Computer scientists focus on theory, the inquisitive search for knowledge and understanding. They explore the past while developing theories that push computing forward and lead to new and better tools and techniques, including programming languages. We were both lucky to have the freedom to choose courses from all aspects of computing, regardless of degree.
University didn’t teach us how to code in the exact languages that some software companies have chosen. It taught us about the ecosystem of computing, how it all began and how we went from the 1 and 0 to search engines like Google, which answer billions of queries a day. Throughout this journey we learnt many languages, patterns and paradigms but that was secondary; once we understood the theory we could pick up a new language within weeks.
Both of us are also programmers and we write code on a daily basis. We each learnt how to develop operating systems and algorithms, artificial intelligence and networks, web applications and graphics. We spent five years learning the theories and concepts that underpin the industry yet we only reached the tip of the iceberg.
Our education wasn’t too different from Harvard and Stanford, which teach the theory of computing much in the way we experienced at UNSW. The greatest threat to Australian startups isn’t American companies taking their customers; it’s those companies recruiting our talented graduates (and they certainly do).
The goal of university isn’t to produce the model employee that companies and industry demand today. The aim is to produce educated citizens that can learn, adapt and push the industry forward in the years ahead. If you want to be an electrician then you can learn the trade at a TAFE, if you wish to be an Electrical Engineer then you go to university.
Anyone can learn to write code but they will never be a Software Engineer or a Computer Scientist. They won’t be able to design large scale financial systems, search engines or contribute to the next powerful programming language. They can build you a simple website for a thousand dollars but they can’t build the next Google and they won’t create the technologies of the future. They will be displaced by them.
