"My main occupations are being owner/operator of ww.com"
This guy is not a programmer. He is a business owner that can program. He can call himself a trashman and not loose a dime.
I am a programmer
71–80 of 130 posts
Re: I am a programmer
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that is the wrong way to approach things. Your job as a programmer was to provide that deliverable as set out by your position. You programmed it and it went along. The outcome of that deliverable was the improvement but your job was to construct it. I don't pretend that my past jobs were "automating IPTV interface interactions" or "enabling alternative business transaction venues"... I was programming what wa…
It is hard for those of us who know how to tinker to appreciate that there really are folks who don't tinker. You assign them to pull the levers, and they pull the levers. If the machine they're running is manifestly inefficient, they don't notice, or they pretend not to notice. (Or – if they're good – they adapt themselves , adopting a complex series of difficult physical and mental moves to compensate for the machi…
> When hiring someone to solve our problems we desperately need to know whether or not we're getting a hacker, or a technician.
So you base this on whether someone calls themselves a programmer or not?
Re: I am a programmer
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that is the wrong way to approach things. Your job as a programmer was to provide that deliverable as set out by your position. You programmed it and it went along. The outcome of that deliverable was the improvement but your job was to construct it. I don't pretend that my past jobs were "automating IPTV interface interactions" or "enabling alternative business transaction venues"... I was programming what wa…
I think you're missing the point - saying "I'm a programmer" essentially means jack and squat to most people. Saying what you did, and better, what that actually accomplished in real world terms isn't a lie at all, it's what people actually care about.
Do you think CNC operators give a damn whether most people know what a CNC operator does?
This "make people understand what exactly I do and how much value I provide and how precious I am" is yet another manifestation of insecurity of software developers.
Re: I am a programmer
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside software, I'd say "engineers" are pretty well respected in the U.S., but I don't think it actually has any strong substantive connotation. An "engineering" job can range from some sort of strong meaning of the term, to something closer to "technician", which maybe is the non-computing analog of "programmer". There are plenty of, say, aerospace engineers, especially at the lower seniority levels, whose job mai…
Where I'm from the real difference between Engineer and Technician is the amount of responsibility that is placed upon the professional's shoulders. I have lots of technician friends who complain about the work they do being the same as engineers but aren't paid in the same grade as we are. I'm not sure whether or not I agree with them in this case but the reality that I keep seeing is the idea of "responsibility". T…
Ah yes, that's an institutional difference in how engineering sign-off works. In the U.S., you do usually need engineers with P.E. certifications to sign off on a project, and in small firms it works like you describe. But in large corporations, there are typically very few people who do official sign-offs, often only the VP of Engineering or head of a project, who signs the final designs, and anything legally deposited with a government. And they usually don't do it purely on their own professional judgment, but only after consultation with the legal department.
As a result, very few engineers actually have jobs with sign-off authority/responsibility. Even if you do have a P.E. certification, unless you're very senior you'll probably never be officially signing off on anything as a regular employee. Below the top levels, almost all engineering jobs are structured as someone doing internal technical work for the corporation that gets passed upwards for eventual sign-off. That's part of what makes the engineering/technician boundary fuzzy, because nearly everyone is a technician by the classification you describe, in the sense of someone who doesn't independently sign off on engineering work (I do agree that engineering involving more design work is a common differentiator, though).
Re: I am a programmer
#75Yes, me too, I'm a programmer. That's how I think of myself, regardless of what infinitely varied tasks I may do. And me too, that's what I blurt out when people ask me what I do. In more formal contexts, like resumes and job apps, I call myself a software developer, because that's a more encompassing description of what I do. Software development is not just programming, even if that's the most obvious and the most…
> I never voluntarily call myself a software engineer I actually had my company change my official job title at one point in my career to "Software Developer". I have an undergraduate degree in engineering (partially because I wanted to rebel against my parent's wishes for me to do CS). Software cannot be engineered like a bridge. Structural engineering is very narrowly scoped. You have a design load, comprised of li…
> Software cannot be engineered like a bridge.
It can be, as in the world of formal proofs and languages like Ada which facilitate them. It just typically isn't, as such formal procedures are far more costly and slower than than just dealing with bugs as they happen. For critical software systems like say avionics where a failure case is extremely costly (in both money and casualties), there do exist certification programs and rigorous methods as you describe for structural engineering.
It could be argued that avionics behaves more as engineering than as programming. Then we have a self-fulfilling definition: if we define fields with rigorous procedures as engineering, and fields without as software development, then of course software development doesn't have formalized methodology.
You're also comparing the largest scope of structural engineering - a massive bridge - with the entire spectrum of software. Engineering does happen on a smaller informalized scale too, like a homeowner building a shed or a Boy Scout troop building a rope obstacle course. That's still engineering, applying skills in carpentry or knot-tying to build something.
Re: I am a programmer
#76The biggest quarrel I have with this whole debacle is how it all started out. A group of wise asses decided they should fancy their title up and now everyone has to "to stay relevant". The fact is I AM a Software Engineer. I have a degree in Applied Science and I have my Iron Ring. I am registered with my provincial Professional Body. Saying that, I am not just a "Programmer" (I do not mean to sound derogatory) but t…
Frankly, I dispute the existence of a "Software Engineer." The UK and parts of Canada may recognize and regulate people with this title, but I don't believe that the same rigor _can_ be applied to building software. You would have to work with formally verified (and I mean that in the mathematical sense) hardware and software all the way up and down the stack (that would include the language and compiler you utilize)…
> I don't believe that the same rigor _can_ be applied to building software.
Check out aerospace software development processes.
edit: also embedded automotive software
Re: I am a programmer
#77I am a experienced programmer, too. No "software architect" or another label can convert the stupid into brilliant. In most cases is related to recognition, power, and pay, so may be that's the reason of accepting such labels as "normal" (I have no problem with others telling me X, Y or Z, although I find it non-sense as well).
engineer, architect ... I wanna be a software astronaut when I grow up.
Are you referencing Joel Spolsky's article on software astronauts?
Re: I am a programmer
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Er...what...? Bad code won't kill people? I think any longtime reader of HN can think of a few real-life stories that would contradict this. I studied computer engineering and yes, I remember those of us more on the hardware side thinking the ones on the "soft" side of the engineering were the lazy ones. Having been more involved in programming projects since then, I've seen the great value in being able to "engineer…
I was thinking more of the web stuff that people do, so may be overstating my case. There are cases where you really need to make things safe - NASA's Apollo rockets and medical equipment to name a few. Also, when I talk about suing engineers I meant suing a big company such as Microsoft for the glaring security problems in earlier versions of Windows. Some Windows machines would be hacked within minutes of connectin…
> Some Windows machines would be hacked within minutes of connecting them to the internet - in my mind that's simply negligence on the part of the developers - them being liable for creating an insecure product would force them to develop a properly secure solution - in other words to actually engineer it properly.
If software developers were actually engineers, or at least some of them were and were required to sign off, they would actually have authority to influence decisions that had huge impact on this situation - deprioritizing of security, bad project management, etc, not originating from the development side of the organization.
Re: I am a programmer
#79The biggest quarrel I have with this whole debacle is how it all started out. A group of wise asses decided they should fancy their title up and now everyone has to "to stay relevant". The fact is I AM a Software Engineer. I have a degree in Applied Science and I have my Iron Ring. I am registered with my provincial Professional Body. Saying that, I am not just a "Programmer" (I do not mean to sound derogatory) but t…
Frankly, I dispute the existence of a "Software Engineer." The UK and parts of Canada may recognize and regulate people with this title, but I don't believe that the same rigor _can_ be applied to building software. You would have to work with formally verified (and I mean that in the mathematical sense) hardware and software all the way up and down the stack (that would include the language and compiler you utilize)…
I've worked on avionics flight management systems. We had reams of system requirements, multi-person code reviews for every line of code in the product, formal verification runs, system integration testing, field testing... The compilers used were qualified for our use. All libraries used were qualified. All operating system components used in the product were qualified. Internal tools that automated any part of the process were qualified.
I'm not sure what your criteria is for "mathematical" verification, but I see this sort of work as software engineering.
Re: I am a programmer
#80The biggest quarrel I have with this whole debacle is how it all started out. A group of wise asses decided they should fancy their title up and now everyone has to "to stay relevant". The fact is I AM a Software Engineer. I have a degree in Applied Science and I have my Iron Ring. I am registered with my provincial Professional Body. Saying that, I am not just a "Programmer" (I do not mean to sound derogatory) but t…
As a computer engineer, with an iron ring and a bachelor's of applied science, I feel your pain. In Canada, there seems to be some respect given to the title, although it seems to be waning. In the UK, an engineer is someone who fixes your car or appliances. In the USA, an engineer is someone who writes PHP.
In the US, Professional Engineers are licensed through the state and are legally responsible for their work. If you engineer a bridge and it falls down because of a design problem, you are the one at fault.
Until software engineers become legally responsible for crashes/data loss/etc. of their software and can be sued out of existence or go to prison because negligence, they will not demand the same respect that other engineers do.