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According to the dictionary, an "engineer" is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works. A computer is a physical machine t
by remmargorp64 6y ago
According to the dictionary, an "engineer" is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works.
A computer is a physical machine that runs programs which are encoded digitally on physical hardware (memory).
I could see an argument for considering a computer program to be an engineered "machine" that runs on a turing-complete computational platform. Just because a computer program is digital doesn't mean that it's not an engineered mechanism. In fact, early computer programs did run on physical hardware in a physically mechanical manner.
A doctor or lawer, on the other hand, is not building any type of machination. They are diagnosing patients and having arguments with judges. What exactly are they engineering?
- bachmeier 6y ago> According to the dictionary, an "engineer" is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works. That's exactly the point. Programmers write programs. They don't design engines, machines, or public works. Programmers are excluded from the very definition you're quoting. If you want to expand the definition to include the application of scientific methods to solve a problem, so that it includes someone that creates a Javascript single page web app, there's no way to exclude those other professions. Programs are not machines by any conventional use of the term.
- dumbfoundded 6y agohttps://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ You can become a licensed software engineer
- wyclif 6y ago"NCEES discontinued the PE Software exam after April 2019."
- dumbfoundded 6y agoTrue. Looks like only 81 people took it in 5 years. IEEE also seems to offer a certification. In any case, software engineering seems to be considered a legitimate engineering discipline.