3 ms·

> Unlike our brothers and sisters in the other engineering disciplines, though, software engineering does not have the same history of mandatory formal educatio

> Unlike our brothers and sisters in the other engineering disciplines, though, software engineering does not have the same history of mandatory formal education. Was there a time when other engineering disciplines were not formally schooled? Did they develop into having formal education or were they born that way? Is computer programming moving in the same direction via organizations like the ACM? Can we learn from other fields who have in fact experienced similar issues on some level? Do we need to reinvent the wheel of creating an effective culture that rewards all the values humans desire? What are those? Success, ability to express oneself, ... ?

Kalium 11y ago
If anything, with the advent of bootcamps, software engineering is moving away from formal education and into trade schooling. Personally, I think this is a step backwards for the discipline.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
  I resent a little bit. I'm a boiler-maker / welder by trade (metal fabrication). My trade certificate actually says "Engineering Tradesperson". I operate a laser cutter, and have written scripts to automate some of my computer related tasks, and have a rudimentary understanding of Python. I've also worked at an ISP in NetOps doing physical security and infrastructure. I live in Australia so I can only speak for the system we have here: trade school is formal education, the on-campus component of trade education is delivered throughout the nation by TAFE[1] campuses. We are formally educated to build things that don't kill people, and can certainly be held responsible if our actions or omission of action leads to injury. We are expected to escalate anything we see on workshop drawings that could be problematic. Each of the tradesmen in our workshops are required to perform a weld test every six months, which is examined using ultrasound techniques, to ensure our work meets or exceeds AS1554[2] While us tradespeople aren't the ones engineering the bridges, we are the ones building them. Comparatively, the software development discipline is still in it's infancy, whereas the construction trades have been around for millennia. Structural Engineers and tradespeople build physical structures to withstand Category 5 cyclones, but my bank (in the top 10 globally by market cap) can hardly have a month go by where some software system doesn't fail. The advent of bootcamps is probably a side effect of 'coding' becoming relatively easy compared to it's more esoteric history, with the advent of high-level languages like Python and Ruby. Or maybe that stuff about the average IQ increasing over time is correct, and more people have the capacity to understand writing code. Probably both. Another comment here spoke about TDD - Test Driven Development, that's probably closer to the physical engineering disciplines with destructive testing of random batches of building materials. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_and_further_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_and_further_educatio... 2. https://infostore.saiglobal.com/store/PreviewDoc.aspx?saleItemID=2247480 https://infostore.saiglobal.com/store/PreviewDoc.aspx?saleIt...
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Please accept my apologies. With the current state of bootcamps in the US, I feel it's a stretch to call them formal education. They are at best short training programs. There's no accreditation, no accrediting body, and no real quality control beyond the press. That the field has few widely accepted standards does not help matters. Personally, I suspect that the advent of bootcamps in the US is a fad driven by the explosion of the tech sector and the amount of time it takes to train a computer scientist. I suspect that in ten years, they will be much less popular as people who only know Ruby or PHP drop out of the field. It's hard to have a multi-decade long career in computing if you don't actually understand computers.

Kalium 11y ago

If anything, with the advent of bootcamps, software engineering is moving away from formal education and into trade schooling. Personally, I think this is a step backwards for the discipline.

TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
I resent a little bit. I'm a boiler-maker / welder by trade (metal fabrication). My trade certificate actually says "Engineering Tradesperson". I operate a laser cutter, and have written scripts to automate some of my computer related tasks, and have a rudimentary understanding of Python. I've also worked at an ISP in NetOps doing physical security and infrastructure. I live in Australia so I can only speak for the system we have here: trade school is formal education, the on-campus component of trade education is delivered throughout the nation by TAFE[1] campuses. We are formally educated to build things that don't kill people, and can certainly be held responsible if our actions or omission of action leads to injury. We are expected to escalate anything we see on workshop drawings that could be problematic. Each of the tradesmen in our workshops are required to perform a weld test every six months, which is examined using ultrasound techniques, to ensure our work meets or exceeds AS1554[2] While us tradespeople aren't the ones engineering the bridges, we are the ones building them. Comparatively, the software development discipline is still in it's infancy, whereas the construction trades have been around for millennia. Structural Engineers and tradespeople build physical structures to withstand Category 5 cyclones, but my bank (in the top 10 globally by market cap) can hardly have a month go by where some software system doesn't fail. The advent of bootcamps is probably a side effect of 'coding' becoming relatively easy compared to it's more esoteric history, with the advent of high-level languages like Python and Ruby. Or maybe that stuff about the average IQ increasing over time is correct, and more people have the capacity to understand writing code. Probably both. Another comment here spoke about TDD - Test Driven Development, that's probably closer to the physical engineering disciplines with destructive testing of random batches of building materials. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_and_further_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_and_further_educatio... 2. https://infostore.saiglobal.com/store/PreviewDoc.aspx?saleItemID=2247480 https://infostore.saiglobal.com/store/PreviewDoc.aspx?saleIt...
- Kalium 11y ago
  Please accept my apologies. With the current state of bootcamps in the US, I feel it's a stretch to call them formal education. They are at best short training programs. There's no accreditation, no accrediting body, and no real quality control beyond the press. That the field has few widely accepted standards does not help matters. Personally, I suspect that the advent of bootcamps in the US is a fad driven by the explosion of the tech sector and the amount of time it takes to train a computer scientist. I suspect that in ten years, they will be much less popular as people who only know Ruby or PHP drop out of the field. It's hard to have a multi-decade long career in computing if you don't actually understand computers.