Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
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Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#2Yes lets.
We can start by not letting self-important engineers from other disciplines (and ostensible apologists actually looking for click bait headlines) define the character of our problem space.
Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#3Living in a country where engineer is a protected title, and studying toward a degree in computer engineering that grants the title, I don't quite understand the problem.
If you have an engineering degree (or have the required qualifications where it's not protected), you are an engineer.
If you don't, you are not.
Yeah, every programmer isn't an engineer. But some of them are.
Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#4I can't even call myself a programmer, even after spending 14 years writing "code" and the broken social skills to show it.
Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#5In software, your material cost is near 0, you only have a time cost. That changes your model of "most efficient path" to achieve a goal. Sometimes, depending on the problem domain, it's actually OK to test in production, because the efficiency gained is worth a bunch of potential loss due to bugs.
Sometimes in software "getting it done first" is more important than "getting it done right." (I personally despise this sentiment and avoid jobs where I'd have to do this)
Thusly, the difference between and engineer and "just a developer" then is: Engineering is a discipline involving meticulous planning, experimentation, testing, managing, and accurately predicting both results and failure modes. Sometimes writing software is engineering, other times someone just wants a damned blog. I do both jobs. I like the former better than the latter.
And to address the attacks by other engineering disciplines... There are plenty of problems that piss me off all day... like red lights. Why don't we have a radar device to see if there are no cars coming down the road and instantly begin the yellow light traffic cycle so I can turn left? Why isn't my phone waterproof? Why is apple designing computers without god damned ports? Why isn't there a more practical way to save the leftovers other than refrigeration to eliminate waste? Why do we have to use crude oil to produce polymers? When a non software programmer engineer attacks my discipline with "why does my computer crash?" well because you were stupid enough to by one even though you knew it was going to happen...
Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#6I can't even call myself a programmer, even after spending 14 years writing "code" and the broken social skills to show it.
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Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#7In software, your material cost is near 0, you only have a time cost. That changes your model of "most efficient path" to achieve a goal. Sometimes, depending on the problem domain, it's actually OK to test in production, because the efficiency gained is worth a bunch of potential loss due to bugs. Sometimes in software "getting it done first" is more important than "getting it done right." (I personally despise this…
"In software, your material cost is near 0..."
Material cost (e.g., hardware on which to deploy your program) is only near zero for small systems. If you're implementing a large system for a billion users, like Google search or Facebook, writing inefficient code could cost you a few extra acres of hardware in a data center and enough electricity to power a small city.
Actually, even small systems can have significant hardware costs associated with software. If the embedded software in a device you're building doesn't fit into your ROM, you'll need to use a bigger ROM, which may add up to a lot of money over a production run of millions of devices.
Re: Programmers, lets earn the right to be called engineers
#8We talk about engineers and scientists in the ancient world,because that's what they did, not because they had engineering schools and PhDs. It was a more primitive understanding but the craft is the same. I don't see why software engineering is any different.