Hacking, Developing, and Engineering for Regulated Software

How would you characterize your software development style – hacker, developer, engineer, or computer scientist? Of course, the vast majority of readers of this article will not have a “software development style” and, other than trying to forget the struggles from a past “intro to computing” course, this question may not seem relevant to you. However, if you are involved with medical devices that include any software component, having a better understanding of software development style will be beneficial.

Let me start off by saying each of these software development styles has utility and purpose in development of regulated software. Providing a quick definition of the styles, hacking can be described as writing code without specific requirements and little planning with the goal of creating software that produces a result quickly. The developer style is characterized by having requirements, following prescribed standards for development, and producing software that meets the requirements and is relatively “bug free”. The engineer style includes the developer style and also involves designing software that can be evolved to meet changing requirements and can scale to higher volumes of data or higher numbers of users. Finally, the computer science style is focused on optimizing the tools, algorithms, and techniques used for all styles of software development.

Link to article: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/story/32314925/hacking-developing-and-engineering-for-regulated-software