I am cognitive science student. That is why I learnt AI, computational linguistic, machine learning, expert system, etc.
Since I was a researcher on Augmented Reality, then I applied my computing skills. After this, I became a non-computer related lecturer, and spent my time doing programming as a hobbyist. Then later I became computer science lecturer, yet still had to do programming as a hobbyist. Now as a software developer, I know what are the differences of these roles: lecturer, researcher, hobbyist, and a true software developer.
A lecturer, as long as they know how to bluff, they are considered good in programming skill.
A researcher, whether they are good in programming skill is totally not important. Because the focus is the research. As a researcher, you do not need to write programs or scripts. Though these may help, they are not required. As long as your research methodology is correct, that is the core element of the research.
As a hobbyist, you can learn any programming language and write any program. You can write the code that you yourself think it is elegant. You can write any powerful function and use a simple but accurate solution to solve your own problem. You can share your code and publish your project. You can have very strong knowledge to write wondrous algorithm and solve the problem effectively and efficiently. BUT, you are still lacked of industrial experience.
An actual software developer who works in industrial, what you need is to produce stable products. Yes. Stable. In order to produce stable products, you need to have your products fully tested. Hire a tester can only perform black box testing. They test only as an end user perspective. But the problem is, the bugs are found after you have written the dependent codes on the bugs. So, it would be best to test before these, during the development level. As a developer, writing test cases becomes exhaustive. That is why, Test Driven Development comes in. A stable product is the actual thing that the customers want. They paid the money to get the product, or specifically, the customers hire you to develop a product to them. That is why your products must be stable. Unlike the commercial products, the government projects usually have no clear objective. As long as you deliver a prototype, you can get the money. That is why, the products standards are very different, the developers quality is also very different.
As a lecturer, you talk.
As a researcher, you do experiments.
As a hobbyist, you learn and write.
As an actual software developer, you write and test.
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