You’re sitting at your desk, searching for hours on the Holy Internet something you need. You want to create a superb product to be rich, or you want to improve some technical skills you lack for your dream job. You want to build a great personal project.

But you miss something. This is something simple but difficult to grasp. Something everybody speaks about, but only the chosen ones know its true meaning. Something almost magical.

What does it mean to be a software developer?

We could think about creating scalable design, writing good microservices, using nice programming languages, or be aware of the problems we might find along the way. What else?

We sometimes forget that being a software developer means working all day long with human beings. Communicating, explaining ideas, adapting to your team members are very important skills, and the art of debating is part of this set. It’s something we do a lot, sometimes without a real good reason. This is a complex subject which has its own rules and outcomes.

I wondered for quite a long time the following: is it useful to be trained as a computer scientist to be a software developer? Does only knowing the basics of computer science helps to be better developer?

Could it bring value to a developer?

If you ask yourself these questions as well, and you don’t want to invest time (yet) learning computer science, here’s the story of my experience. I’m trying, in this article, to answer these questions:

I had a mission, for many years.

This quest led me to do innumerable Google searches, trying new tools to finally give up each time. I was feeling like a knight fighting the same dragon again and again, and the dragon was always winning. Where was the happy ending?

As Perceval wanted to find the Holy Grail, I wanted to find a good interface for MySQL. I was using MySQL Workbench, like everybody. I wasn’t satisfied, almost like everybody. The software was slow and buggy, the auto completion was working totally randomly. I was searching something similar but simpler and more reliable.

Once upon a time, in the magic Startup Land, there was a fearful backend developer who needed to implement a new functionality.

He was working on a back office for movie producers to upload their movies. These movies could then be rented on a VOD platform. Did you hear about Netflix? Same spirit, except that a customer can rent each individual movies instead of paying a subscription.

After uploading their movies, the producers could choose in what country they would be available.