I think one can pursue software engineering with different goals in mind.
Maybe you work on a side project with new technologies to learn things - in this case the working code is not as important.
Perhaps you are trying to push a product out quickly - working code is the end goal and you may learn a few things along the way.
I find it disingenuous to say that working code is merely a side effect. As the author says, SE is a learning process and the main challenge is to understand the domain. However how the outputs of the process are ranked in importance is subjective and therefore one can rate working code higher than learning.
Although if you consistently rank working code over learning I would assume you are a poor software engineer.
Maybe you work on a side project with new technologies to learn things - in this case the working code is not as important.
Perhaps you are trying to push a product out quickly - working code is the end goal and you may learn a few things along the way.
I find it disingenuous to say that working code is merely a side effect. As the author says, SE is a learning process and the main challenge is to understand the domain. However how the outputs of the process are ranked in importance is subjective and therefore one can rate working code higher than learning.
Although if you consistently rank working code over learning I would assume you are a poor software engineer.