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This article feels painfully misinformed. I am a brother of Theta Tau, the professional engineering fraternity. Many of my brothers are certified professional e

This article feels painfully misinformed. I am a brother of Theta Tau, the professional engineering fraternity. Many of my brothers are certified professional engineers (FE, PE, etc.) I graduated with a dual-major in CS/Math. I strongly disagree with this assertion that failures in tech make us undeserving of the moniker 'engineer'. Software systems are inherently complex, and we have built incredible testing tools, processes, continuous integration, monitoring systems, and infrastructure to add strong rigor to our discipline. As part of most engineering degrees, students explore case studies of where engineering went wrong and failed. I can assure you that there are many failures in civil engineering (see ASCE's report card), mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and other engineering disciplines just as there have been failures in the tech industry. Licensure is not as applicable to the tech industry, and certifications have been cheapened by low-quality applicants. They've become a negative signal. Additionally, the tech industry, in my opinion, innovates at a significantly faster pace than the licensed engineering disciplines. Perhaps these are correlated in some way. Companies like Google are right not to overvalue degrees. If someone has the requisite knowledge and ability, it should not matter whether they learned from a book or on their own. Software interviews are significantly more rigorous that interviews in other engineering fields. Civil Engineers are not expected to be able to whiteboard open channel flow problems during an interview, but software engineers are expected to answer multiple interviews of algorithms and system design questions. This article is just long-winded, useless rambling. Rage against Silicon Valley all you want, but we call ourselves engineers because we _are_ engineers. Software runs critical infrastructure in medicine, finance, aeronautics, traffic control systems, the electrical grid, and even the internet infrastructure used to deliver this nonsensical article. I suggest the author read about incidents such as the Therac-25.

gspetr 10y ago
> Additionally, the tech industry, in my opinion, innovates at a significantly faster pace than the licensed engineering disciplines. Perhaps these are correlated in some way. I think you're right. Regulation stifles innovation. Even in a narrow sense, thinking software alone, everyone knows the saying "Standard library is where modules go to die", meaning that there are stricter requirements to make it to the standard library in the first place and stricter still to update them once they've made it in.
- VLM 10y ago
  Its not just regulation. We're not getting rid of Eulers critical column load equation because of neophilia whereas in software if its over two years old it must be scrapped as obsolete and no longer trendy. Engineering is very predictable because of the enormous amount of procedure. It takes precisely X labor hours for an engineer to analyze a house roof blueprint and specify a scalable system of installing anything from 1 panel to covering the entire roof with solar panels that will survive local wind and snow loads with essentially 100% survivability yet also being minimal cost. Its just incredibly predictive. On the other hand a lot of software development is throw something brand new at the wall see if it sticks, if it does, great, scale till it doesn't, if it does not then its not your fault because its new and nobody can predict nothing in software development. Will it take 3 months or 4 months to write that app, who knows, unpredictable. No large body of "human life trustworthy" predictable process has developed... yet... for software except in the simplest cases. It doesn't help that due to moore's transistor law times were changing fast such that what would have required a miracle and some scientific breakthrus in the 70s is now the structural engineering equivalent of some carpenter building a doghouse, its so small that overbuilding doesn't matter and theres no human lives at stake so hiring a structural engineer for hours to calculate the rafter geometry and size for a doghouse is a waste of time and money, leading ignorant people to think solid engineering principles are in opposition to profit for ALL software development, which is a bit of a mistake. And leading to a desire for software engineering to exist, although there is no academic teachable scalable hyper-predictable mathematically provable process for software development like there is for circuit analysis or structural beam design or chemical process kinetics for scaling so desiring "truely engineering like software dev" is like wishing for magic to be true, sure would be convenient if it existed, but since it doesn't, the people who claim to be engineers are kinda like people who claim to be alchemists, best hold on to your hat. With a side dish of "engineer" being a modern term of nobility only granted by certain authorities and extremely jealously legally guarded. And a side dish of hiring people who know nothing about computers or engineering think engineer sounds impressive, so its required on resumes, just like "rock star" or "guru" or "ninja".

gspetr 10y ago

> Additionally, the tech industry, in my opinion, innovates at a significantly faster pace than the licensed engineering disciplines. Perhaps these are correlated in some way. I think you're right. Regulation stifles innovation. Even in a narrow sense, thinking software alone, everyone knows the saying "Standard library is where modules go to die", meaning that there are stricter requirements to make it to the standard library in the first place and stricter still to update them once they've made it in.

VLM 10y ago
Its not just regulation. We're not getting rid of Eulers critical column load equation because of neophilia whereas in software if its over two years old it must be scrapped as obsolete and no longer trendy. Engineering is very predictable because of the enormous amount of procedure. It takes precisely X labor hours for an engineer to analyze a house roof blueprint and specify a scalable system of installing anything from 1 panel to covering the entire roof with solar panels that will survive local wind and snow loads with essentially 100% survivability yet also being minimal cost. Its just incredibly predictive. On the other hand a lot of software development is throw something brand new at the wall see if it sticks, if it does, great, scale till it doesn't, if it does not then its not your fault because its new and nobody can predict nothing in software development. Will it take 3 months or 4 months to write that app, who knows, unpredictable. No large body of "human life trustworthy" predictable process has developed... yet... for software except in the simplest cases. It doesn't help that due to moore's transistor law times were changing fast such that what would have required a miracle and some scientific breakthrus in the 70s is now the structural engineering equivalent of some carpenter building a doghouse, its so small that overbuilding doesn't matter and theres no human lives at stake so hiring a structural engineer for hours to calculate the rafter geometry and size for a doghouse is a waste of time and money, leading ignorant people to think solid engineering principles are in opposition to profit for ALL software development, which is a bit of a mistake. And leading to a desire for software engineering to exist, although there is no academic teachable scalable hyper-predictable mathematically provable process for software development like there is for circuit analysis or structural beam design or chemical process kinetics for scaling so desiring "truely engineering like software dev" is like wishing for magic to be true, sure would be convenient if it existed, but since it doesn't, the people who claim to be engineers are kinda like people who claim to be alchemists, best hold on to your hat. With a side dish of "engineer" being a modern term of nobility only granted by certain authorities and extremely jealously legally guarded. And a side dish of hiring people who know nothing about computers or engineering think engineer sounds impressive, so its required on resumes, just like "rock star" or "guru" or "ninja".