Rhetorical Visual Analysis of Richard's Guide to Software Development

Robert Young

Visual Rhetorical Analysis

English 250

Section PN

Richard’s Guide to Software Development: A Visual Analysis

This image was published in November of 2012 on a website called “Sandra and Woo,” which is an internet site used for web comics like this. Therefore, it would be correct to assume that this piece’s purpose is to entertain: that’s what comics are supposed to do. Most of the people viewing this comic are normal people that have some idea what software development is actually about, but haven’t really been in-depth in the field. For instance, someone who is interested in becoming a software engineer, but hasn’t actually programmed anything, or pretty much anybody else.

In this image, the cat is being used as an analogy for a computer program that has been, or is being, developed. There are several different frames, each one for a different perspective on how a program is made or what a program is like in each stage of development.

In the first frame, the cat is kind of just a sketch, just like when a Software Engineer has the very first idea for his program. You have a basic idea of what it looks like, but not necessarily exactly what it will look like or what it does. It hasn’t actually been started yet, and there will be a lot of work to do, just like a program needs to be developed before it can actually become what it was intended to be. When I went back to look at this later, I noticed that some parts of this first frame are done in great detail, like the head, while others are just barely started, like the legs. This may be because some parts of a program have to be explained a lot for it to make sense, while other parts make sense intuitively.

The second frame is a representation of how much time has been spent on each part of the program. Notice that the larger percentages of time are spent on things that are just kind of off to the side, like the tail and legs instead of the torso, or head, which is kind of like more time was spent on bonus features instead of the main program. This isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes you get done with the main part of the program, and would like to add some features, but the features are actually more complicated than the main part of the program. Usually programmers use things called functions, and these functions help out the main part of the program. On a cat, the legs help the cat move around. One of the more complicated parts of the cat, the tail, helps keep its balance, which is extremely difficult to simulate, and may take more time to perfect than the rest of the cat. It is things like that you have to take into consideration.

The next two frames go together. One is labeled “How the Software looks before the beta test,” and depicts the cat with its hind legs missing. In the analogy to a computer program, this would mean that some features are missing, but most of the main functionality is there. After the beta test, in the second of these two frames, the missing functions are there again, but now different features are missing. This kind of helps explain that no program is ever complete. Every time you change something, it seems like it caused something else to be broken. In this case, adding the hind legs accidentally removed the front legs.

The first frame in the second row is labeled “How the software is advertised.” It displays a ferocious-looking tiger. This cat does look a lot better than the other cats on the page. It is depicted as a tiger that could supposedly run at up to sixty miles an hour and swallow a small child whole, even though the cat that is illustrated in the rest of the image probably wouldn’t be able to do that. This relates to Software Engineering because software often claims to do things that it actually doesn’t do very well, if at all. From personal experience, some applications on the Windows Store claim to do things that they don’t actually do. I won’t list specific examples because most of those have been fixed now.

The frame with the giant question mark is the one that was most interesting to me. It is labeled “What the customer really wanted.” Since the frame consists mainly of just the ginormous question mark, it indicates that nobody really knows (or cares) what the customer really wanted. They are going to get the cat-program even if they wanted a dog-program or even something completely unrelated, such as a flower-program. This is something that I myself do not necessarily agree with. If Software Engineers are unable to produce exactly what customers want, then why have them? The software engineers have to have something to work towards, even if not everything is explicitly stated for them. What the customers want is known to the Software Engineers, they just might think of a different way to do it than the customer wanted.

The second-to-last frame, the cat with the arm sticking out of its back and the elephant trunk growing out of its nose seems a little out-of-place. To me it looks like features were added that weren’t really wanted (or intended). It is kind of symbolizing a computer bug. It is a side effect that wasn’t expected or intended, but is part of the program anyway. In software engineering, bugs can sometimes be hard to get rid of, and getting rid of them can sometimes lead to more problems. To relate this to the picture, I don’t think this cat would appreciate us chopping off the arm on its back, and it could create a very large mess that would be a pain to get rid of.

The final frame of this strip depicts a human, probably the developer, with the cat. He is happy with what he has created it, even if it is a little bit strange or not what was expected. It shows that software engineers actually care about what they do, even if other people think it is strange. They like their program, even if it isn’t working quite right or looks strange. The “toot” is in their for comedic value, I suppose.

All of these things are more or less true about Software Development, from what I have seen so far. I’m not so sure about the giant question mark about what the customers want, but the rest of the details seem pretty solid. I’ve done my fair share of programming, and I’ve seen most of these things in action.

Works Cited

Knorzer, Oliver, and Powree. “Software Engineering, Now With Cats!” Sandra and Woo. N.p., 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2012/11/19/0430-software-engineering-now-with-cats/