71–80 of 93 posts
I only clicked on this link because I saw the geocities.com. I was expecting more BLINK tags and animated gifs :(
I assumed all geocities.com sites have been deleted. How is this possible?
As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful. Similarly to the 'are you technical?' thing, why is there such an aversion to the term programmer or software developer? I have no problem with the term 'software engineers', as i do seem some parallels, and it is clear wha…
"As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful." I'm not certain it has anything to do with the physical world; after all Industrial Engineering is considered a valid disciplined that is entitled to an Engineering license, and many of the IE's I know might be better cha…
But here you're taking it for granted that professional licensure of software engineering is actually desirable, which is not at all agreed upon. Among the organizations against the notion are the ACM.
As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful. Similarly to the 'are you technical?' thing, why is there such an aversion to the term programmer or software developer? I have no problem with the term 'software engineers', as i do seem some parallels, and it is clear wha…
Does the military's use of the term to apply to anyone doing construction irk you as well? http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjobs/a/21.-uJZ.htm
For example (note "combat engineers" is in quotes):
"Military experience?
All branches of the military have engineers doing genuine engineering work. In this regard, the military is just like any other employer, and the engineering work experience counts. However, work performed by "combat engineers", electronic repair technicians, and so on is generally not true engineering work." [1]
[1] http://ppi2pass.com/faqs/qualifying-to-take-the-licensing-ex...
As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful. Similarly to the 'are you technical?' thing, why is there such an aversion to the term programmer or software developer? I have no problem with the term 'software engineers', as i do seem some parallels, and it is clear wha…
I have a bachelor of software engineering and could pursue PEng if I wanted (which I won't). Right after graduating it annoyed me that everyone in software called themselves engineers, but I got over it. Engineering is defined by the various international agencies and schools that accredit engineers, not Wikipedia. "Software Engineering" is a real engineering discipline in Canada and other places. The premise "An eng…
An exam based in physical sciences would be a great way for people with an educational background in physical sciences to stake a claim on software, calling themselves "engineers" while everyone else is a mere developer or programmer, putting themselves at the top of the field.
I majored in Math and have an MS in Industrial Engineering. I think that it would make as much sense to make everyone prove that they've passed courses in Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis, and take a difficult exam involving proofs about optimization and convexity to be a "software engineer." And this time, I would get to be on the top of the totem pole instead of people who have a more physics and chemistry based education! I hope it's clear I'm being facetious here - I just want people who do advocate PE style licensing to get a sense of what it's like when people from a different field start telling you what you need to know and do to practice your craft.
I do understand that there are software elements to engineering systems, and it might make sense to have some sort of licensing around it. However, I have yet to see a professional association refrain from severe "scope creep", using their cartel-like power to establish arbitrary and unnecessary barriers to entry to restrict entry and jack up prices.
Software is kind of like engineering, but I agree with the author that it has more in common with mathematics. Seriously, it would make more sense to require a degree in math and an exam in path than a PE exam. And it would not make sense to require this kind of math.
My take on it is this - I am not an engineer, what I do is not engineering, and the PE folks have absolutely no legitimate claim on what I'm doing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful." I'm not certain it has anything to do with the physical world; after all Industrial Engineering is considered a valid disciplined that is entitled to an Engineering license, and many of the IE's I know might be better cha…
> Perhaps the solution is to have legal weight (perhaps like 'Lawyer' or 'MD') behind the title, as countries like Canada have (the US has this to some extent, but it's not nearly as strong). But here you're taking it for granted that professional licensure of software engineering is actually desirable, which is not at all agreed upon. Among the organizations against the notion are the ACM.
As you indicated, ACM would constitute as (a major) part of that push back, so I don't see the contradiction.
Here, close to the article, is an example of some of what is missing:
In engineering for, say, a bridge, the design engineer can get quite comprehensive data on the 'engineering properties' of the materials, components, and processes he is intending to use. E.g., he knows the stiffness of steel beams, the tensile strength of steel cables. and how much weight a reinforced concrete column can carry.
Now in computing, for an algorithm, what do I know about the resources it requires? E.g., I just wrote a Web site session state store using TCP/IP for communications, my own code to convert the TCP/IP streams to the 'messages' I needed, and Microsoft's .NET collection class SortedDictionary to store the pairs of session keys and session values. So, how do I know fast my code will be and how much storage it will need? That is, could I get data on TCP/IP and SortedDictionary so that I could tell before writing and running the code?
That is, do I have solid engineering information about the components I used that will let me know, before writing and running the code, the final performance of my software?
NO!!!
Instead, about all I can do is run the code and measure the execution time. For the storage needed, I don't have a good solution even given the running code.
So, by analogy, if bridge building was like software writing, then a bridge engineer would not know how strong his bridge was until he built it and tested it with loads.
So, net, the bridge designer can 'engineer' his bridge just on paper before any construction has started, but I can't do the same for my session state store.
Again, a big difference is that the bridge engineer has detailed engineering information on his components and I do not.
As someone with an engineering degree, it does irk me to constantly hear programmers referred to around these quarters as 'engineers', it's extremely introspective, and IMO a little disrespectful. Similarly to the 'are you technical?' thing, why is there such an aversion to the term programmer or software developer? I have no problem with the term 'software engineers', as i do seem some parallels, and it is clear wha…
"Programmer" is someone who just writes code. They don't plan, organize refactor ... they write code according to someone's instructions. They can see that it works and debug issues, but they're not the "architects" or "engineers" of the system. The men doing the physical labor of building a ship aren't the "engineers."
"Software developer" doesn't have simplistic connotations to me, but seems to evoke something in non-devs ... as if I'm using lingo and being pompous.
"Software engineer" is someone who designs software systems and understands the impact of design decisions made from the bottom/back of the stack through the top/front. Perhaps, this being an industry of mental rather than physical labor, the engineer also fills the job of "programmer."
So in my mind, "engineering" is a way of thinking about and solving problems in any given space; it requires breadth and depth. But how do you quantify something like that in an industry that changes so rapidly, where someone can begin to grok concepts and "get their hands dirty" without ever having to approach the dangers out in The Real World? You don't want some random kid to think he can build a bridge, but he can certainly start writing software... and he can become "engineer quality" before he ever gets to a university.
I don't know that I've ever heard anyone call themselves "an engineer." That's nice. Does that mean you drive trains? That you design and build roads? I don't believe many engineers of the physical world variety can just just fields - a computer engineer is not going to build sky scrapers.
"Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that 'computer science' is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative po…
But some parts of math deal "with notions of 'how to'" and there commonly do so more "precisely" than computer science. There are such parts in optimization, control theory, statistics, and numerical analysis.
E.g., numerical analysis says how to (1) solve systems of linear equations numerically exactly using just single precision arithmetic, (2) solve systems of linear equations with accuracy guaranteed by error bounds from condition number, (3) solve systems of large, sparse linear equations where the matrix is large, positive definite, and diagonally dominate, (4) how to solve ordinary differential equation initial value problems, e.g., for space flight trajectories, and (5) how to solve partial differential equations of heat flow, fluid flow, and electromagnetic fields, and (6) how to do discrete Fourier transforms of positive integer n points in time proportional to n log(n) instead of n^2; statistics says how (1) to get minimum sufficient statistics in the Gaussian case, (2) how to design a most powerful statistical hypothesis test, (3) how to pick a survey sample size that will give desired accuracy, (4) how to get minimum variance, unbiased estimators in multivariate statistics, and (5) at a Web site with users arriving at a rate of 10 a second, how to find the probability of a minute with arrival rate of over 20 a second; control theory can show (1) how to execute best possible decision making over time under uncertainty, (2) how a rocket can reach orbit for minimum fuel, (3) how an airplane can climb to a given altitude in least time; and optimization can show (1) how to find least cost flows on large networks while avoiding cycling in the network simplex algorithm, (2) how to assign interceptors to targets in the best possible way in guaranteed execution time, and (3) how to assign signals to satellite channels to minimize the worst case of signal interference.