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The terminology is shifting though, and has been for some time now. While I agree that CS/SE is not "engineering", it's the common term across the top companies

The terminology is shifting though, and has been for some time now. While I agree that CS/SE is not "engineering", it's the common term across the top companies, with words like "developer" now fading in use. For me, I have the opposite reaction to coder vs engineer. For a coder, I think code monkey, someone who writes boilerplate MVC apps and can't handle algorithmic complexities, write code that others can understand, or consider lower levels of a system they are interacting with. Also synonymous with hacker, which I would bet also has a reversed connotation for those who see coder as a good thing. When I hear engineer, it's synonymous with the jobs at the big name companies and implies the person thinks their job is complex enough to warrant the title, even if not deserved by the standards of other engineers. Of course, all of this is semantics, including the debate over what is an "engineer". In the end, it's pretty meaningless in terms of impact. CS vs SE I think should be the focus, as yes, the two can be quite different, even if most CS degrees end up working in SE.

Clubber 9y ago
>The terminology is shifting though, and has been for some time now. Yes, I agree. "Coder" and "Programmer" are grey beard terms. >Also synonymous with hacker, which I would bet also has a reversed connotation for those who see coder as a good thing. Yes; a hacker is someone who can bend the computer to their will, even when it isn't supposed to do it. That's one of the reasons people who crack software and infiltrate systems sometimes get that moniker. >implies the person thinks their job is complex enough to warrant the title, even if not deserved by the standards of other engineers. Ya, that's kinda the problem. It has an inferiority aura about it. > In the end, it's pretty meaningless in terms of impact. CS vs SE I think should be the focus, as yes, the two can be quite different, even if most CS degrees end up working in SE. It absolutely is meaningless, I guess that's what bugs me about it. CS is for creating an improving algorithms. John von Neumann discovered/created merge sort in 1945 (among other things). He is CS. "Engineering" is taking merge sort and using it for efficient joins in an RDMBS; applying science to an actual thing.

Clubber 9y ago

>The terminology is shifting though, and has been for some time now. Yes, I agree. "Coder" and "Programmer" are grey beard terms. >Also synonymous with hacker, which I would bet also has a reversed connotation for those who see coder as a good thing. Yes; a hacker is someone who can bend the computer to their will, even when it isn't supposed to do it. That's one of the reasons people who crack software and infiltrate systems sometimes get that moniker. >implies the person thinks their job is complex enough to warrant the title, even if not deserved by the standards of other engineers. Ya, that's kinda the problem. It has an inferiority aura about it. > In the end, it's pretty meaningless in terms of impact. CS vs SE I think should be the focus, as yes, the two can be quite different, even if most CS degrees end up working in SE. It absolutely is meaningless, I guess that's what bugs me about it. CS is for creating an improving algorithms. John von Neumann discovered/created merge sort in 1945 (among other things). He is CS. "Engineering" is taking merge sort and using it for efficient joins in an RDMBS; applying science to an actual thing.