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This is absurd for many reasons pointed out in this thread. The broad brush is especially problematic. If "programmers" should stop calling themselves "engine
by dap 11y ago
This is absurd for many reasons pointed out in this thread.
The broad brush is especially problematic. If "programmers" should stop calling themselves "engineers" because of the prevalence of poor quality software, couldn't one argue (equally speciously) that "writers" should stop calling themselves "journalists" because of the prevalence of things like listicles and clickbait? In journalism as well as software, the garbage seems to far outweigh the good stuff (by volume). And in both fields, some professionals are trained, but many are self-taught, and neither skills nor ethics are uniformly incorporated into all practitioners' work.
I believe there _is_ a legitimate issue around the quality of software. But I don't see how demoting the class of people who build software brings us any closer to improving that situation. Rather, I'd be interested to read a thoughtful article about _why_ low-quality software remains prevalent. (I have a feeling it's because bad software remains economically viable -- in turn because it's still actually useful to people. A bridge that falls down is useless. An app that crashes every day is very frustrating, but potentially still worth the price. I'm just guessing, of course, but that's why I'd love to see a well-researched article that seeks to understand the problem before prescribing a solution.)
- catnaroek 11y agoI don't see it as a demotion. Au contraire! Engineers work under hard constraints - the laws of nature aren't subject to negotiation. Sometimes earthquakes bring down buildings and bridges, sometimes tsunamis destroy harbors, sometimes water floods destroy dams, not because engineers are malicious, but simply because it's impossible to do better. We programmers have the luxury to seldom run into the laws of physics as a hard constraint. The vast majority of the time, when software fails to behave the way it is intended to, it's simply and plainly because we made a mistake. It is in principle possible to write bug-free software, after all, software is nothing but a logical artifact.
- catnaroek 11y agoI don't see it as a demotion. Au contraire! Engineers work under hard constraints - the laws of nature aren't subject to negotiation. Sometimes earthquakes bring down buildings and bridges, sometimes tsunamis destroy harbors, sometimes water floods destroy dams, not because engineers are malicious, but simply because it's impossible to do better. We programmers have the luxury to seldom run into the laws of physics as a hard constraint. The vast majority of the time, when software fails to behave the way it is intended to, it's simply and plainly because we made a mistake. It is in principle possible to write bug-free software, after all, software is nothing but a logical artifact.