Is Website Development considered as engineering project or not?

 

First off, the question is asking if you should be one thing or another thing that have overlapping definitions. It's like asking if it's better to be a race car driver or a stock car driver. Since a stock car is usually used for racing, this is typically the same thing as a race car driver, and yet it doesn't specify if you're just the guy that drives the stock car to the scrap yard when it no longer works.

I've been working as a software developer since the late 90's and much of that development has been web-based application development, so I can provide a little history on the growth of web development that might help put the terms into a bit of perspective that might help you understand why there is so much confusion and help you decide which "path" is for you.

Back in the late 90s the Internet was finally taking off. People were using it as a sort of super powered yellow pages to advertise their company and their products, and some enterprising individuals were using it to help educate people, often at high personal expense. Most sites were "static", meaning that all the pages looked the same and besides blinking text, there wasn't much that could even change on the screen. By this point, there were already some "dynamic" sites that you could actually post data to and get some feedback from. Most of these were done with a technology called cgi that used some sort of perl script on the backend. I say some sort because this slightly predated my own software development and I don't know much about it. The point is that, for most people, a web site was just that, a site full of web pages that were typically put together in some sort of designer like Front Page or something, and usually by some creative marketer and not by a developer.

One of the first web-based applications I worked on was using a technology called Active Server Pages, and it included the challenge of constantly explaining to the management and security teams that a web based application was different than a web site. The rules were such that we had to get approval every time a web page changed, and since our web paged changed every time a user submitted information, this discussion started to get tedious to explain.

Another difficult issue was hiring. Most of the people who claimed to be expert web developers were really just designers. We learned, quickly, to ask what technologies they had used for web development and if the only thing on the list was front page, we knew they didn't know that they were not "web developers", just "web designers"

So, as you can see, a bit of confusion has enveloped the web development role for some time now.

The reality is that true web development is really another word for client/server software development.

Now let me point out one other distinction that has popped up over the years and which is likely to continue to change while people are still confused by the name. Software development VS software engineering.

I have worked with a lot of developers out there and as you do, you will find that many of them fall fairly cleanly into one of two different types, neither of which is necessarily better or worse than the other, but one of which is typically necessary for more complex development.

One type, sometimes referred to as code monkey, but usually they are just called developer, is the type of developer who knows how to write code. This type of developer is frequently very fast at coding and knows the software language they use very well. However, these developers frequently lack the skills needed to solve difficult problems. If you don't tell them explicitly what you want done, they will either constantly ask you how, or give you something that doesn't work.

The second type of developer is often paid more and in the right situation is worth more, and this is commonly referred to as a software engineer. This is the type of developer who can look at existing pieces of code figure out what is going on and find a way to make it work better. Software engineers are usually more aware of what is actually going on underneath the covers in the development. For example, they are more aware of whether a process is looking for data using an index or a scan, and which is faster and why. These are the types of developers who frequently care less about what language is used and are more interested in how to solve a problem. They will make new formulas if one does not already exist to get them what they want or need. These are the developers who are frequently the ones designing best practices such as SOLID coding. Note, these developers are not always the fastest. They often get stuck in analysis paralysis where they know so many ways of solving a problem and can't always decide which one to use. They frequently get sidetracked on certain difficult problems as well. Good software development environments will hire both types of developers.

Being this type of "software engineer" tends to be more about personality, though. If this is not who you are, I wouldn't follow this path, despite the potential pay difference. You won't be happy trying to live up to the expectations if you aren't this type and it can be hard to live up to even if you are. On the other hand, if this is the type of person you are, you will find it difficult to be anything else.

One final piece of advice. Once your degree is 3 years old or more, it only matters that you have one, not what it's in, as it will likely be obsolete by then. At that point, the only thing the degree does is get you past the secretary who's sorting the resumes. Your experience will count for more in the interview.

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Article By:

Shubham Sagar
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