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> Engineers or developers? > Code grinder Well those semantical terms won't get you anywhere. There isn't a difference which will reach consensus. But alas,

> Engineers or developers? > Code grinder Well those semantical terms won't get you anywhere. There isn't a difference which will reach consensus. But alas, I see the root of your argument. Universities aren't teaching people to be great for corporate America, despite how warped that ideal of higher learning has become. Coding schools are sticking to what is relevant for current roles. Many of the coding schools already know what the current roles are and act as glorified recruiters making the bulk of their earnings on the placement of their students in roles they have already lined up. Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack.

eropple 9y ago
> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack. I fully agree, and I think that's a great job to teach to and for people to have. I think conflating it with this-had-better-frigging-work engineering is dangerous to both the profession and the people who trust us to do good work for them (both as employers/clients and as a society). Engineer means something. Hell, I build systems expecting them to fail and I understand how to proof them, to the best of my time/cost allowances, against failure. I'm still not "an engineer". And--and this is important--I am also not held liable like one.
- lovich 9y ago
  I get and even agree with your point, but that distinction already doesn't exist in current software engineering. Unless there is some sort of rules and/or punishment against calling something engineering when its not, like being responsible for failures the same way the guys who engineer bridges are responsible, then its just gonna be meaningless words. I have seen companies convert people from "Software Developer" to "Software Engineer" just to make them happier without a raise. If it actually meant something we wouldn't have the industry standard interview consisting of seeing if you can do basic comp sci algorithms either. As far as I am aware other engineering disciplines don't get asked to whiteboard something like calculus to see if they can do the basics when they go for a new job
  - eropple 9y ago
    Choosing to make a muddy distinction worse because "everyone does it" is not really deserving of applause, is it? I mean--words mean things. (And, to that end, I do think that the word "engineer" should be federally protected to distinguish us idiots from professional engineers.) And, yes, the tire fire that is interviewing is a large part of this.
    - lovich 9y ago
      I don't mean to muddy it, its already muddied. Saying someone is a lawyer is easy, if they passed the bar they are a lawyer. If someone has a medical license they are a doctor. There is no equivalent for software engineering. If you got 20 software engineers in a room you'd end up with 25 definitions for what a software engineer is. A good portion of the software community does not want a governing body over the industry. If we are going to accept that, then we also need to accept that titles are meaningless because there are no standards.
      - eropple 9y ago
        I don't accept that and I think that those people are, by and large, why we need one. But, by "muddying", I was referring to the original post I replied to that pimped services for turning people into somewhat-competent web developers and calling them engineers. Sorry for the confusion.
dozzie 9y ago
> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack. Exactly the same could be said about electric engineers, except that they are regulated and need to be certified.
alphaalpha101 9y ago
'Semantical terms'? Semantics literally just means 'meaning'. If you don't want a discussion to involve discussing meaning, what do you want it to discuss? Your grammar? Your spelling? Your syntax?

eropple 9y ago

> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack. I fully agree, and I think that's a great job to teach to and for people to have. I think conflating it with this-had-better-frigging-work engineering is dangerous to both the profession and the people who trust us to do good work for them (both as employers/clients and as a society). Engineer means something. Hell, I build systems expecting them to fail and I understand how to proof them, to the best of my time/cost allowances, against failure. I'm still not "an engineer". And--and this is important--I am also not held liable like one.

lovich 9y ago
I get and even agree with your point, but that distinction already doesn't exist in current software engineering. Unless there is some sort of rules and/or punishment against calling something engineering when its not, like being responsible for failures the same way the guys who engineer bridges are responsible, then its just gonna be meaningless words. I have seen companies convert people from "Software Developer" to "Software Engineer" just to make them happier without a raise. If it actually meant something we wouldn't have the industry standard interview consisting of seeing if you can do basic comp sci algorithms either. As far as I am aware other engineering disciplines don't get asked to whiteboard something like calculus to see if they can do the basics when they go for a new job
- eropple 9y ago
  Choosing to make a muddy distinction worse because "everyone does it" is not really deserving of applause, is it? I mean--words mean things. (And, to that end, I do think that the word "engineer" should be federally protected to distinguish us idiots from professional engineers.) And, yes, the tire fire that is interviewing is a large part of this.
  - lovich 9y ago
    I don't mean to muddy it, its already muddied. Saying someone is a lawyer is easy, if they passed the bar they are a lawyer. If someone has a medical license they are a doctor. There is no equivalent for software engineering. If you got 20 software engineers in a room you'd end up with 25 definitions for what a software engineer is. A good portion of the software community does not want a governing body over the industry. If we are going to accept that, then we also need to accept that titles are meaningless because there are no standards.
    - eropple 9y ago
      I don't accept that and I think that those people are, by and large, why we need one. But, by "muddying", I was referring to the original post I replied to that pimped services for turning people into somewhat-competent web developers and calling them engineers. Sorry for the confusion.

dozzie 9y ago

> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack. Exactly the same could be said about electric engineers, except that they are regulated and need to be certified.

alphaalpha101 9y ago

'Semantical terms'? Semantics literally just means 'meaning'. If you don't want a discussion to involve discussing meaning, what do you want it to discuss? Your grammar? Your spelling? Your syntax?