We choose engineering degree or any other IT degree to become software engineer. We work hard, pass the exams and join any software company and society calls us software engineer. Are you really a software engineer by just writing some code for simple websites, software or mobile applications without worrying much about the engineering concepts we learnt?

Anybody who can write code technically is not a software engineer. As a software engineer you should see your development from many engineering angles for example lines of code, efficient logic, architectural structure of software and many more things which we studied in theory and not using those at all. Bigger companies like Google, Facebook checks these skills which we all ignore and never try to use practically.

Let’s see what are the concepts a Software Engineer should know to be a real Software Engineer and ready to boost his/her career:

1. Object Oriented Programming can clean your code flow:

You should have complete knowledge of all Object Oriented Programming concepts then you can use this in your programming more accurately. Other than OOP concept definitions you should how these concepts practices work in real programming. If you are programming in OOP way but still don’t know where all 4 main concepts encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritance and abstraction used in your code then you should think to enlighten yourself. Click here to know how 4 pillars of OOP are used in real code.

2. Architectural Patterns are necessary to architect your project:

This is the most important concept after Object Oriented Programming concept. This basically tells you the efficient ways to design your software functioning architectural level. MVC(Model-View-Controller) is one of the pattern which most of the framework follow. There are many other concepts under this like Repository Pattern, Facade, Factory and many more. If you have idea about these concepts you can visualise how frameworks like Laravel built and working. This is a step to make your own packages for available frameworks

3. Data Structure is your best friend to manage data handling at run time:

Data structure ensures you know well how data is stored in variables and how it is manipulated for our usage during programming. These are Stack, queues, hashing and many more. If you at least have idea about these you can manage your arrays and object very efficiently and you will end up with a clean and fast executing code. It will reduce usage of un-necessary loops and manipulations. If you are week in Array processing then you should revise all Data structure

4. Algorithms make your logic small and accurate:

You should not learn all algorithms but you should know these once so that you can try to implement these in your day to day programming. Algorithms make code small and accurate to ensure it will work exactly the way we want. There are many algorithms and you can also make your own but at least you should be very handy with Searching and Sorting algorithms

5. Version control helps to fix your mistakes:

Version control systems are the tools which keeps versions of your code. Git is one of the popular version control tool you might be using. Version control system not only keeps version of your code but also are good backup and collaboration tool. Your code is always there in case of code losses and recognises who did the mistake while working in team

Above are some concepts or tools which are necessary for a software engineer. If you are unaware any of the above then prepare yourself and become a real software engineer which will make you ready for bigger projects and boost your career by upgrading you for bigger companies.