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For a direct comparison between Mechanical Engineering and Software Engineering as defined by NCEES, here are the specifications for the Software Engineering PE

• kragen 11y ago
  Thank you. That's an excellent example of exactly what I was saying: the mechanical engineering exam areas are things like "Bearings (e.g., journal, ball, roller, lubrication, life-load relationships)" and "Thermodynamic cycles", while the "software engineering" exam areas are things like "Software design representation (e.g., UML, E-R diagrams, SASD, data flow diagram)" and "Software testing strategies (e.g., black box methods, white box methods, error guessing, performance, test coverage metrics, validation, regression testing)". The first set consists of engineering techniques; the second set consists of management techniques. It sounds like you could get a perfect score on the "software engineering" exam without being able to write so much as a for loop, let alone design a web server component architecture or debug a priority-inversion problem in a real-time system. And yet you have people who propose that such exams should be required for writing safety-critical systems. This is intellectual fraud on the level of substituting homeopathy for medicine. It makes my blood boil, and it puts lives at risk.
  • lfowles 11y ago
    Is it not possible there is also some disconnect between a MechE and the technicians? Yes....theoretically these materials work this way, but practically no one can manufacture this thing for you. It's definitely more apparent with SEng (especially because I'm familiar with the topics), but the real incentive of having licensure is the ability to revoke it and put liability on the licensed individual.
    • kragen 11y ago
      In my experience, mechanical engineers spend a lot of time working on how to make things more manufacturable, and both in their degree programs and on the job, they often spend enough time getting their hands dirty to have some intuition for manufacturing. I think the more common disconnect is between the guy who designs the machine and the guy who has to fix it and cusses him out because there is no reason you should have to take the whole damn engine out to replace that damn piece of rubber that wears out twice a year.
• gcb0 11y ago
  those are a list of very open ended subjects for the software one. and not very defined for the mec version either.