justin smythhe, You ask question which arise in my mind also when i see java API (open source) or open source projects also...
Think of it like this -
A car (API) is put before a physicist and a non-physicist.
The physicist might try to find out how the car works and even try to understand
its internals.
The non-physicist might be only interested in driving the car and maybe learning a
thing or two about the internals.
Paul Clapham's one sentence i not understand...
However your analogy is badly chosen. Java programmers are engineers, rather than scientists.
I agree with further statements written by him...
For example i am java programmer i can write program in java. but now i want to know how it works...if we take example of car...like by after starting engine...shifting gear & blah..blah... & car moves...OK
But now as physicist i want to know how actual java program run...then i read about openjdk...bytecode...more & more deep...& so java program run...(till date i not find out way to get debug stack in such deep...)
question is, Engineer study about science or something else?
If java programmer are engineers then should he/she think like 'physicist'(in above quote)...then it wrong?
...software engineering (note, not "software science")...
I know by google i can get lots of info about both...but can in easy words anyone explain here?
I apologized in advance if i wrong some where here...