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Software Developers Become Experts in Their Industries
Would you trust a coder to fly your plane? They almost could.
That’s a bold statement.
Saying that the developer who coded the avionics could actually fly the plane is a very outlandish claim. License, flight hours and certifications aside, what else would the coder need to fly the plane?
Well, the developer would need to know how to navigate and control the avionics, flight instrumentation and various other controls. Modern aircraft are controlled by what’s called “fly-by-wire” where the controls feed signals to an internal computer which in turn controls the mechanical gizmos that actually control the airplane’s flight.
In some airplanes, there might even be a complete server room with racks of computers lurking in its belly.
Well, someone had to code those computers. Someone had to make sure that feeding it certain inputs would produce very precise and prescribed outputs and behaviors. These developers had to have a full understanding of the parameters that control flight, inputs that take the plane from takeoff to cruising altitude, and the settings and values that keep the plane safely flying. Auto-pilot uses a very defined set of inputs that maintain speed, direction and altitude.
All of these are running on a computer that was coded by developers.
Theoretically, the developer could get in the cockpit and know how to feed the correct values into the computers to get the plane into flight.
Back on the Ground
Coming back from that lofty (pun intended) claim, let’s examine what goes on at your local bank.
Let’s say a client goes into the branch to take out a loan. The bank rep requests a ton of info from the customer — biographical information, income, existing debts, and so on.
All of this information is fed into the computer. The final click of the Submit button tells the rep whether the loan request is approved or denied.
Somewhere in the inner workings of the loan application software, there were lots of calculations being made. There were requests for credit reports. There were formulas being…
