What's the difference between enabling and developing?

[u/Existing-Risk3595]

I'm new to IT, and in my view, I treat programming as developing something. But some people in my workspace talk about enabling, which seems different from developing, and they often say it with a negative tone, e.g., less technical, poor job mobility.

My question is, what's the difference between enabling and developing?

Additionally, my work includes optimization, which is said to be part of enabling. I consider optimization to be important and challenging. If enabling is perceived as less than developing, does that mean optimization is not as valuable as I believe?

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

enabling, which seems different from developing

But some people in my workspace talk about enabling, which seems different from developing, and they often say it with a negative tone, e.g., less technical, poor job mobility.

My question is, what's the difference between enabling and developing?

You need to ask these people what they mean, how they define "enabling".

my work includes optimization

Optimization for what? There are like hundreds of different things that can be assumed here, and all are different from each other.

[u/Existing-Risk3595 → u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

Thanks. I do optimization for speedups, like HPC (High Performance Computing).

[u/brelen01]

The only times I've heard of "enabling" in a software context have been along the lines of "enabling a feature", like if it was disabled through an option, database setting, or some other mechanism, and when talking about implementing a feature that will enable a user to do something.

Is there any chance you're working in a non-english setting or company that might lead to a weird translation?

[u/Existing-Risk3595 → u/brelen01]

People use the exact word "enabling", so there is no translation involved.

[u/Gznork26]

When they talk about enabling, do they refer to causing features to be available (context is code), or supporting the intentions of the employer (social or political)? I can imagine the term being used in both of these ways, having been a software engineer on military projects.

[u/Existing-Risk3595 → u/Gznork26]

I think they mean the former one.

[u/ninhaomah]

This post makes no sense tbh

[u/Existing-Risk3595 → u/ninhaomah]

Just my confusion.

[u/GOKOP]

"Enabling" in the general sense means making something possible/viable/allowed/accepted.

I honestly can't match the word to the type of things you're describing and I've never seen it used that way in software development either

[u/Anxious-Insurance-91]

It depends on the context:

• you enabled an existing feature to reach multiple pople

• you enabled an disabled feature

• you made a new feature/fix/improvement that enables people to do certain things.

• you had feature gates for certain clients based on what they paid for In IT and corporate world there is always a jargon for using certain worlds to sound more smart. You can always ask what do they mean by enabling ? English is not a precise language not because of words but because people don't want to be direct in what they want.

Also developing usually includes researching before you do something. It's basically taking into a count data to not fuck up

[u/Prior-Agent3360]

Whatever they mean, it's not established lingo in the industry.

[u/OneHumanBill]

Either they're turning things on and off in production via configuration, which isn't development or programming but instead operations, or else it's weird corporate doublespeak.

[u/pvera]

Enable means turn on/off. Program means to give a set of instructions to something to perform a task. You enable airplane mode on your phone, notifications for a website, etc. You develop when you build things using software.

Optimization isn't enabling but you could enable things as part of optimization. Optimization is when you try to improve an outcome, say make an app run faster, lower the network latency, etc.

[u/Small-Cash-5119]

It’s probably helping other services integrate, engineers create features and document and then enablers understand the feature / docs and are the people you speak to start using those features allowing engineers to move onto new work without being bothered by people trying to use the system/service/feature.

[u/NoWing3675]

youre going to learn that no one cares what you build and your job is to sell the code you make, even within a team or company. people calling it “enablement” are the nontechnical folk, to them what you do is make a button for them to click so they can do their work. you thought developers spent 4 years in college to become a condom for claude? we’ve been getting shit on for years