> Mid-level engineers who recently discovered software design patterns tend to fall into this category.
A mid-level engineer who only just discovered Design Patterns. So, a first or second year university student is a mid level engineer?
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In theory yes, in practice no. Generally speaking university students learn, prove-knowledge-of, then move on to the next course/subject.
University projects also tend to be much smaller in scope than any sort of realistic product that a company can be built on. Therefore, the level of technical debt created by under-engineering and the codebase comprehension learning-curve created by over-engineering is not something most university students have exposure to.
Therefore, I think the article's intent hints more at experience than knowledge. It is possible that once a graduate gets enough experience with an under-engineered project, a lightbulb moment will occur where they see how they can apply their university knowledge by refactoring everything to be more testable, scalable, etc. Depending on the opportunities offered, they may well choose to over-engineer their next task.
Given the theoretical and academic nature of most course work though, it's more likely that an over-engineered solution is inspired by a HN post than by someone recalling their university education.
Good point!
There is of course a difference between just studying for an exam and retaining the information long enough to pass the test, and actually retaining the information for a longer period and being able to apply the learned principles in bigger, industrial-scale projects.
Most first or second year students aren't going to be able implement cqrs or even find out about it. In my university design patterns were never taught formally as teachers were more interested in the research aspect of computer science.
We had a course dedicated to design patterns in the third semester, a second course on them in the fourth semester, and in semester 6 you could optionally take another course on them.
On top of that, we always had suggested reading material which would be given at the start of a semester. I'm fairly sure, but not 100%, that design patterns were mentioned at the start of the second semester as suggested reading material but not yet mandatory (since we would see it the year thereafter).
But my memory is hazy on that, I know that I picked a book up on it early in university but it is possible that that was one that I found by reference from another book and not by the list of books from the university.