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The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

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Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#71

Post by Jtsummers »

morganherlocker wrote: post #36
BrownBuffalo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there is. If you are a software developer, you are skill laborer. If you are software engineer - you have the PE / FE exams. In some states its even illegal to call yourself a softare engineer (or [insert word here] engineer, without having an "engineering" degree. Secondly, the major problem to start out with is the proper business definitions / rules for which the software is designed for. Because software…

> If you are software engineer - you have the PE / FE exams. In some states its even illegal to call yourself a softare engineer... Is this actually illegal in any state, and is it actually enforced in any state? I would bet that 99% of people who have the title "Software Engineer" have not taken those exams, and most have a CS degree.

Searching for that I found that the Software Engineering exam for PEs was introduced in 2013. I doubt that any states require it yet, if they do it's probably a provisional thing (way too many people that should qualify that won't because they haven't taken the exam yet, that's time and money to get certified, be stupid to require it after only 1 year of availability).

EDIT: Exam information (pdf):

http://cdn1.ncees.co/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Exam-specifi...

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#72

Post by pnathan »

thatthatis wrote: post #15
pnathan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your history is really quite correct in its nuance. Programming as an actual trade emerged quickly in the 50s. The 60s saw the rise of computer science degrees, often coming from either the Math or the EE side. During the 50s and 60s, the computers had tons of people working with FORTRAN/COBOL (& others) to churn out business code. This accelerated in the 70s. There were armies of basic programmers out…

Thanks for the addition. I made un-researched generalizations based on limited knowledge of the skills possessed by the pioneers in the field. I agree that it has, at the least, nuanced errors. But, I try not to let the exact truth get in the way of a good story unless the exact truth is the crux of the argument.

I'm sorry, but the truth desperately matters in your account. Timelines are very important in understanding how knowledge flows from group to group and from generation to generation. In particular, these things need to be highlighted:

- Computers became commercialized around 1952-54. Immediately prior to that, physicists hired programmers for the clerk work of coding up their problems (interesting note: they usually were women. You can find the story online of the programmers who worked with von Neumann. It's very interesting).

- Business adoption was pretty good! In fact, by the late 60s, software was exhibiting its standard characteristics - buggy, late, expensive, hard to control. See the NATO conference on software engineering, 1968.

- In the early 60s, dynamic languages came about in the form of Lisp. This did not take off until, AFAIK, Perl started making headway in the 90s.

- Cobol, Fortran, and others that I don't remember were standard in the 50s & 60s. And everywhere. These preceded the foundation of computer science as an academic discipline, which became institutionalized in 1969, give or take.

- Where did these business developers come from? I don't have job ads, but in my readings from the journals of the times, academic work seems to have gone on fairly apart from the line of business development.

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#73

Post by wes-exp »

Even barbers are licensed professionals.

Meanwhile wannabe "software engineers" are copy-pasting together web applications that store the personal information of millions of people without the slightest thought behind security or proper design.

We collectively wonder why there aren't more programmers... maybe the problem has never been a lack of education, but a lack of prestige and respect.

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#74

Post by walshemj »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #34
BrownBuffalo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there is. If you are a software developer, you are skill laborer. If you are software engineer - you have the PE / FE exams. In some states its even illegal to call yourself a softare engineer (or [insert word here] engineer, without having an "engineering" degree. Secondly, the major problem to start out with is the proper business definitions / rules for which the software is designed for. Because software…

The issue is that you don't need to be chartered professional software engineer to get virtually any programming job. That isn't true for other engineering professions. Most civil engineers are PEs and they often have to be to do their jobs legally. Mechanical engineers are often PEs. Electrical engineers doing electronics often don't bother (as it isn't legally required for most work) but EEs doing line-voltage and…

Not really I worked at a top 5 civil consultancy and the majority of engineers where not chartered it takes quite a few years of professional work to achieve that status.

and its more about "who you know not what you know" to quote my dad

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#75

Post by rayiner »

pessimizer wrote: post #68
rayiner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without necessarily disagreeing with your point, it's interesting to note that software developers bear almost zero liability in practice for all the buggy software they write, while even big name law firms get sued, and lose, regularly on malpractice claims. If Microsoft was as "protected" from malpractice as lawyers are, they would've been sued out of existence for Windows 95/98/ME.

One of the benefits of being unprofessional, I guess, is that the products of our labor are generally considered products of the corporation we work for rather than us as individuals. Google, SAP, etc. get sued all the time, though.

Google, SAP, etc, get sued for things like breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. A lawyer or doctor can get sued for his or her work not meeting the expected standard. Imagine the following bug: a variable can take on values of RED, GREEN, and BLUE. You write a switch statement that fails to consider BLUE. Your product crashes, causing your user $5 million in business losses. You get sued for software malpractice, for failure to consider an obvious alternative case.

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#76

Post by bobochan »

codystebbins wrote: post #60

So reading this it seems the primary argument against programming as a professional career is that entry level programming is becoming more accessible to a wider audience. However I think the author fails to make the argument though that just because some 14 year old can learn JavaScript quickly with a service like codeschool, that means I could hire that kid to replace a senior level programmer with a deep understan…

I agree with you, but I think that "entry level programming" is unfortunately much further away from the general public. I can still roll over to my Apple //e, reach around and flick the power switch, and be right into a BASIC prompt so that I can start typing in commands. Writing a game in the mid-80s meant a text adventure that would eventually be printed out and published in magazine. The first game that I ever bought was "Ultima" and it came on a floppy inside a resealable gallon kitchen bag. I talk to middle school students all the time that want to know how to code their first FPS before they have even got Hello World up and running.

Setting aside what is best for programmers and their "status," it seems to me that what business needs are hundreds of thousands of employees that have at least enough of a programming background that they can automate some of their most mundane and repetitive tasks. I used to work in finance and I would sometimes wander through the rows of analysts and account managers copying and pasting spreadsheet data and making charts and presentations deep into the night. It is time to stop that insanity, to expose everyone to enough programming so that concepts like loops and if/then statements are understandable.

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#77

Post by maratd »

pessimizer wrote: post #62
maratd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no overarching professional organization or boards, therefore incompetents aren't de-certified and national lobbying isn't coherent. Incompetents are rarely de-certified in professions that have what are effectively guilds. How nutty do you have to be to appreciate a holdover from the middle ages? In fact, it is usually the incompetents who seek the protection of guilds and unions. Without them, where would…

I don't know what you do for a living, but as a programmer, I meet incompetents who should be expelled from the profession all of the time. Aside from incompetence, I don't want to share a profession with programmers who would help create a surveillance state for the NSA, any more than the medical profession should tolerate doctors who work for torturers. The question is about programmers being considered professiona…

My point wasn't that there are no incompetent programmers.

There are plenty.

My point was that in our profession, and it is a profession, it is much more difficult to be incompetent. As a consequence, there are fewer incompetents than in other professions.

In regulated professions, once you get through the door and get certified/licensed/whatever you can then use that as a badge of competency to get work. You can't do that with software development. Nobody cares what certification or degree you have. They want to know if you can code. How wonderful is that?

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#78

Post by Mvandenbergh »

walshemj wrote: post #74
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that you don't need to be chartered professional software engineer to get virtually any programming job. That isn't true for other engineering professions. Most civil engineers are PEs and they often have to be to do their jobs legally. Mechanical engineers are often PEs. Electrical engineers doing electronics often don't bother (as it isn't legally required for most work) but EEs doing line-voltage and…

Not really I worked at a top 5 civil consultancy and the majority of engineers where not chartered it takes quite a few years of professional work to achieve that status. and its more about "who you know not what you know" to quote my dad

Sure, but those people are still working towards accreditation, they're part of that system in a way that most software engineers are not.

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#79

Post by bmj »

pessimizer wrote: post #11

Were we ever considered professionals? There's no test - all you have to do to be a software developer is declare yourself to be one. There's no overarching professional organization or boards, therefore incompetents aren't de-certified and national lobbying isn't coherent. In fact, the largest companies that we work for are frequently lobbying for things that programmers don't support, or actively damage our interes…

There's no test - all you have to do to be a software developer is declare yourself to be one. There's no overarching professional organization or boards, therefore incompetents aren't de-certified and national lobbying isn't coherent.

And how does testing work? Do you do language-specific tests? Or general CS knowledge tests? And how do CS-knowledge tests apply to HTML/CSS slingers? Or are they not "programmers?" And if you certify by language, what does a company do when it wants to use a different, perhaps more applicable language for a product? Must all their devs be certified first? And what would this do for language development? Would anyone adopt new languages (or even variants) knowing that there are now institutional barriers?

Re: The Erosion Of The Status Of Software Developers As Professionals

#80

Post by pessimizer »

maratd wrote: post #77
pessimizer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you do for a living, but as a programmer, I meet incompetents who should be expelled from the profession all of the time. Aside from incompetence, I don't want to share a profession with programmers who would help create a surveillance state for the NSA, any more than the medical profession should tolerate doctors who work for torturers. The question is about programmers being considered professiona…

My point wasn't that there are no incompetent programmers. There are plenty. My point was that in our profession, and it is a profession, it is much more difficult to be incompetent. As a consequence, there are fewer incompetents than in other professions. In regulated professions, once you get through the door and get certified/licensed/whatever you can then use that as a badge of competency to get work. You can't d…

>there are fewer incompetents than in other professions.

My point is that I don't buy this. I would trust the average doctor's opinion on a medical subject far more than I would trust the average programmers opinion on a technical subject.

The fact that I am a programmer might have something to do with this, though.

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