In my quest to become a better programmer/developer (sounds way too serious, but hey), I was trawling through Stack Overflow posts on software engineering.

I came across this question: “Is Software Engineering a mature discipline?”

My answer is a big resounding NO. Everyone who works in IT knows how quickly everything changes. There isn’t enough time to formalise standards. Computing and software engineering is like the Wild West – everyone does their own thing.

I found this gem of an answer too:

Nope. An analogy would be that we are practicing alchemy (emerging discipline with lots of “folklore”) rather than chemistry (matured/formal discipline with outcomes that can be proven before implementation).

So I’m a software alchemist then?

Sounds great.