271–280 of 309 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess anyone can call themselves a doctor then, and we'll just have to call proper doctors "professional doctors" or "licensed professional doctors".
What's a "proper doctor"? Is someone who obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature not allowed to call themselves "doctor"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (BTW, I get seriously uptight at all the web designers who like to call themselves engineers :-) ) I feel similarly to you, but would extend it to cover most software development, period. With feet in multiple traditional engineering disciplines, I don't see the majority of software development as coming close to the bar of engineering (though some certainly does). And I don't mean that in the sense of licensure, n…
My computer engineering degree included Chemistry, Physics, Mechanical Engineering (statics/dynamics) Multivariate Calculus, Differential Equations / Linear Algebra, as well as Humanities (writing, history, art) in addition to software, hardware, electronics... Am I not coming close to the "bar of engineering"? You can boil engineering down (maybe a bit much, but bear with me) to: plan, execute, measure, adjust. The…
I'm not making a point about degrees and coursework covered per se, more so about the practice of the profession. Of course, education prepares one for practice, so they are very linked.
I think the practice of computer engineering straddles the line more between engineering and craftsmanship than does say typical software development which is largely (though as I noted before, not entirely) in the craftsmanship camp. For what it's worth, I have a Computer Engineering degree as well.
> You can boil engineering down (maybe a bit much, but bear with me) to: plan, execute, measure, adjust.
I get your gist, but it misses some essential elements. Engineering is about understanding your objectives/requirements/constraints well and ensuring that what you implement satisfies those while being correct/sound. Of course, there is almost inevitably a circular dependence between the understanding of objectives/requirements/constraints and correct implementation.
If soundness is trumped by other considerations, e.g., "development velocity", developer availability, convenience of tooling, etc., I would say you are not practicing engineering. It's not that most software development sets out to implement bugs or design flaws, it's that there's an irreconcilable difference between the mindset that treats their elimination or preclusion as a first-order consideration and lets the development approach fall out accordingly, vs. choosing a development approach and then trying to weed out soundness issues after implementation. The heated arguments in favor of continuing to develop mass-deployed or high-stakes systems in languages like C or C++, or weakly-typed languages shows the strong bent of the software development world toward craftsmanship over engineering. It's one thing when those are the only tools available; it's another thing when there are viable options that force more correctness yet people can't get over how unencumbered they feel when they go the unsafe route.
I recognize these statements probably offend, but my point is not to troll with a polemic. It's to say that software is a new technical vista compared to traditional engineering disciplines. It provides a kind of power and speed of system implementation radically unavailable in the physical realm. Our ability to construct software systems far outstrips the allotted time, and often until recently the ability, to reason about them.
This is definitely changing, and the work going into enabling soundness-by-construction through tools accessible to any competent developer is worthy of innumerable plaudits. I think we are heading toward most software development as engineering, but we are far from it today. The daily news of "hacked" systems and the never-ending stream of "system security updates" is proof.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they let the people operating trains call themselves engineers ?
No. https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/media/pressReleases/Pages/default.a...
I did a little Googling and in Ontario there are exceptions for flight engineer, train engineer, sound engineer, aircraft maintenance engineer, operating engineer, stationary engineer, and hoisting engineer.
Does free speech mean anyone can call themselves a doctor, too?
There is a very famous legal case dubbed “Dr. Feelgood”. The guy would approach women in apartment parking lots, tell them they have a disease and he could “cure” them with sex, because he has been injected with the cure. He successfully convinced and had sex with multiple women, and he actually charged them $750 to boot. As you might expect one of the charges was fraud...turns out men’s right to lie to women’s out b…
California amended the law after the Boro case, showing there was no consitutional right to obtain sex via frauduent medical procedures.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1841426.html
http://nysbar.com/blogs/lawstudentconnection/2013/11/rape_by...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Speech can never be a crime Speech can be a crime. Google limitations on free speech. The specific example you gave is in fact a crime.
But in this case the intent is to cause harm which is a crime, not merely saying the words. Thats why the crime is "yelling fire in a crowded theater " not just "yelling fire". Notice the difference and how it becomes a completely different action altogether despite saying the same thing. I don't think it's fair to say speech can be a crime on its own.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Intent is a necessary component of the crime, just like intent is necessary component of most crimes. The intent to cause harm is not the crime.
>Thats why the crime is "yelling fire in a crowded theater" not just "yelling fire". Notice the difference and how it becomes a completely different action altogether despite saying the same thing.
Actions in themselves aren't universally crimes in all contexts, that doesn't mean they aren't crimes in specific contexts.
If what you are trying to argue is that no string of words can be a crime to utter in any context, then yes you are correct, but by that standard no individual action can be labeled criminal.
>I don't think it's fair to say speech can be a crime on its own.
SCOTUS has ruled many times that all speech isn't protected by the first amendment. Some speech can be made, and has been made criminal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A professional engineer has to pass a pretty rigorous test that takes every bit of 8 hours for most folks. I studied for hundreds of hours for mine (not kidding) and it took me two tries to pass. I know great engineers who are trying for the sixth time. Getting an engineering degree is really hard at most colleges. Passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam is also challenging, but a joke compared to the P.E. exam.…
Let's not oversell the PE or the FE: I took both drunk and completed them in under 3 hours each. The true point of being a professional engineer is that you've satisfied the MINIMUM requirements to be licensed and, therefore, you are licensed by the state to sign off on documents within what you consider your expertise. It relies on you to make that determination with the understanding that you should know better, re…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (BTW, I get seriously uptight at all the web designers who like to call themselves engineers :-) ) I feel similarly to you, but would extend it to cover most software development, period. With feet in multiple traditional engineering disciplines, I don't see the majority of software development as coming close to the bar of engineering (though some certainly does). And I don't mean that in the sense of licensure, n…
I am seriously curious, what is the difference between e.g. an mechanical engineer designing a new machine and a person designing a new software system that is intended to be maintained for at least 10 years by various teams? Is there some sort of bonus just because it's physical vs virtual?
No, it's not about a "bonus" because it's physical. erikpukinskis [1] and blihp [2] captured essential reasons for the differences in their comments, and I did so in my response to yc-krain [3]. I mean this in no way condescendingly, but if the bulk of one's technical experience is all in software with no deep exposure to the engineering lifecycle in the physical realm, it could be hard to grok the underlying theme of rigor that these comments get at.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18801168
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Working in Canada where my degree was not certified If they have an engineering conference in Canada, and a notable engineering expert comes from abroad to speak but isn't from a Canadian certified school (perhaps they're from a British one instead) do they get uptight about that as well? At some point they must accept that non-Canadian-certified people can be engineers as well?
The issue here is probably more that software engineering isn't considered to be engineering in Canada. If a notable historian from a country where they call historians engineers came to the country to speak, people probably would get uptight about that.
By whom? Canadian software engineers, other types of Canadian engineers, or by some professional engineering body that's trying to protect their profession?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My computer engineering degree included Chemistry, Physics, Mechanical Engineering (statics/dynamics) Multivariate Calculus, Differential Equations / Linear Algebra, as well as Humanities (writing, history, art) in addition to software, hardware, electronics... Am I not coming close to the "bar of engineering"? You can boil engineering down (maybe a bit much, but bear with me) to: plan, execute, measure, adjust. The…
None of the things you listed would seem to indicate anything about your ability to employ a rigorous approach to software development equivalent to what a credentialed civil engineer does with roads. A civil engineer is not credentialed because they took physics and DiffEq. They are that because their field has defined a body of knowledge and rigor that has been shown to adequately protect the public within a narrow…
Q: Are there many software engineers who build poor-quality roads in their spare time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He was not engaging in professional practice, it was civic practice. You don't need an economics degree to comment on a tax measure.
But if someone commenting on a tax measure claimed to be an accountant then you’d certainly think they were a licensed CPA, wouldn’t you?
If someone claims to be a licensed CPA, they are likely to be a licensed CPA.
Look at what you need to do to become "an accountant" in the UK:
https://www.ucas.com/ucas/after-gcses/find-career-ideas/expl...