Old, but fun read that argues that today’s programmers are not like typical Engineers and shouldn’t really call themselves that as Engineering requires certification, is subject to government regulation, bear a burden to the public, etc.
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There is a huge difference between a “programmer” who just codes, and a software engineer, who studied computer science and learned the skills for problem solving as an engineer. The latter is protected in many countries.
Yeah, and at least in my country, there are mandatory courses common with all technical (not sure how that should be translated properly to English) engineers, such as extensive physics, maths, electricity and such, that us software engineer students also have to pass along with our specialization to even get to the thesis part of the engineering degree.
After all this, I’ll have no trouble calling myself an engineer. Neither does the university I go to. Nor anyone, really.
Without the degree, sure. I’d be ashamed, even, to claim such a title. But that’s just because the whole engineer degree is well established and has a set meaning. I’d be software developer, as I am now, instead of the software engineer I aspire to be.
I may be self-taught, but I love the field of programming computers and have studied it in my own free time. I happily call myself an engineer if the 99% of engineers coming out of uni and entering the job market can be called one.
Weird hill to die on.
I think it depends on the country. That being said I was a systems admin and I hated the title systems engineer for that exact reason. If I had gotten my PhD I was hoping to be in academia and keep away from the doctor title. I know its a doctorate and appropriate but its like the old joke. Is there a doctor on board…
Yes, I hate every tech capable of writing shell scripts and SQL being called an engineer. Myself included. I’m not an engineer. Not yet at least. Maybe I’ll muster some willpower to finish that BS next year.
I call myself an “IT systems engineer”.
It’s like the term “social scientist”. People always like to quibble, but eh… whatever…
Tech bros have ruined the prestige of a lot of titles. Software “Engineer”, Systems “Architect”, Data “Scientist”, Computer “Wizard”, etc.
I prefer the term code wizard.
It’s not just tech bros, it’s the whole approach - weird names, version numbers turning into marketing tool instead of just numbers, attempts to hype up things that shouldn’t be hyped up.
When I was a kid in Russia in year 2003 (suppose), it was associated with everything Chinese. But then Windows Vista and iPhone and what not … came into normality. And now everything, not just toys produced in China, is something made of plastic and intended to break next day and be unfixable.
I’m torn between two things - one is to accept life as it is, because that’s truth, and another is that in future of my dreams we’d have good, reliable things, their price and availability helped by scientific and industrial development.
I guess what one can wish is for the developing world to finally develop in all its parts sufficiently to make the current paradigm of a few manufacturing countries making everything for the rest of the world, but using IP of a few designing countries, unworkable.
Decentralization and competitiveness help everyone.
I think IP and patent laws have been a tool to create stagnation. You won’t make Spectrum-like machines for kids in school, when you can have something from the Intel+AMD/ARM-ASML-TSMC ecosystem. And if you don’t accept US and EU and in general European world’s IP and patent laws, you’ll get practically embargoed. And those are close to legalized monopoly. And without breaking a lot of patents, even trying to build a competition to ASML and TSMC in like 40 years is going to be a few orders of magnitude less possible than with breaking them (still not very likely).
So what I’m trying to say - Speccy is probably not something to aim for now, it’s not problematic, just no demand. But aiming for something like Sun equipment of year 1997 would be a good idea. If hardware of that level were produced on scale in a few bigger countries, like Brazil or India or even China, it would make a lot of difference. I know China has Loongson. On scale.
And job listings, I had a longshot hope of getting into product development/product design. But 99.8% of job listings using those terms are for code monkeys.
As a web application developer I agree. I believe my proper job title is “software developer” which is close enough, but I prefer to be concise when telling people what I do. Even if I do become an “engineer” I wouldn’t get caught saying that in social settings.
Well… I did write an engineering thesis and later got a diploma, so I think I will call myself an engineer.
I don’t control the job title my company gives me.
I am an engineer, just not of programming
I think software is still engineered.
Perhaps as a compromise, non-software engineers could call themselves hardware engineers, or hard engineers for short.
Should bridge that gap in terminology. And ofc assumption should be “engineer” means “hard engineer” and software engineers should always specify they’re software engineers and not call themselves just engineers.
There is a difference between computer programmer and software engineers.
Ah, by the way, Edsger W Dijkstra referred to himself as a programmer. Good times.
Make me
You should stop calling yourself an engineer unless you drive a train
Engineer is a protected title in the UK. You can be a software engineer, if you are qualified to be.
Wow, I stand corrected. I wonder where I got that from then. Thank you for the link.
Same thing in Ontario. I actually have a Bachelors of Software Engineering, but am not legally allowed to call myself an engineer because I never got certified with the regulatory body.
As someone who has a formal education in Computer Engineering, I can attest that the degree is essentially a combination of modern Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degrees. In other words it is a dual major without any of the benefits.
Not all Software Engineers do actual engineering and that’s okay. The only problems I’ve seen with this in my time in the tech industry is when you have someone who can talk the talk, but when it comes time to do the difficult mental work, they fold like a deck of cards, or worse release a product that’s half-baked. You will see this a lot when a boot camp churns out talent hoping to make a quick buck and then they are given a truly important and hard problem to solve, such as healthcare or military applications.
For that reason, many SWE roles require education to be specified on resumes, rather than certifications as a hoop you have to jump through. If your job did not question your education when you were interviewing then that is usually a good indicator of the kinds of people you will be working with. With all of that said I’ve worked with many engineers that did not have a formal education and were very talented, some of which lied about their education to get where they are today. This happens frequently across all industries however, and isn’t unique to software.
