Chapter 1. Software as a Profession

In this chapter, we will investigate what I hope is an interesting set of questions. Sometimes, the real value of a question is not so much in finding a specific answer, but in allowing the investigation of the question to lead you to other, perhaps more valuable questions. Also, sometimes discovering a question that is not being asked, or is not asked very often, can help us see opportunities that we are missing, which can also lead us to further, valuable discoveries.

I’ve been “in software” for a long time, but it occurs to me that we’ve reached a point in our industry when “stepping back” to see the nature of what we’re doing might be a useful thing.