The art in the science of software engineering

The art in the science of software engineering

Coding reviews are an excellent way to evaluate the work of software engineers with the aim of iterative improvement, it is common knowledge that there are multiple ways to solve the same problem in software engineering, this however must still be assessed from the perspective of productivity, performance and maintenance. Any solution that best embraces all three criteria is fit for deployment.

A couple days ago I was having a code review with nine other colleagues of mine, we were individually trying to solve the same problem. What was mind-boggling was how the same problem was solved by ten people in ten different ways.

Coding is more art than science because there's so much more room for human ingenuity, rather than a structured approach to solving problems, with software engineering each individual can infuse their style of problem-solving and yield results. It was really beautiful how we all learnt from each one another during the code review thus compounding our individual productivity.