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I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering, Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010

I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering, Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't produce software systems of high quality, and it doesn't produce them for low cost. Sometimes, even when practiced rigorously, it doesn't produce systems at all. That's odd, because in every other field, the term "engineering" is reserved for methods that work. What then, does real software engineering look like?

kyuudou 6y ago
Sounds like some of the cynicism behind Dijkstra's bit on software engineering[0] "A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot."." [0]https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... Edsger W. Dijkstra's "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science"
- yesenadam 6y ago
  I was very sceptical too, but when I watched it, it all sounded very common-sensical.
walshemj 6y ago
Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  > Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. > And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost. That seems to me a low-quality comment, sorry. The lack of punctuation and the spelling mistakes made it hard to parse, and until you flesh it out more, I'm not sure precisely what point you were trying to make. And more mentioning, less "lets not mention"-ing, please.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    its two sentences mate ok first one it should be one of - I am dyslexic go sue me

kyuudou 6y ago

Sounds like some of the cynicism behind Dijkstra's bit on software engineering[0] "A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot."." [0]https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... Edsger W. Dijkstra's "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science"

yesenadam 6y ago
I was very sceptical too, but when I watched it, it all sounded very common-sensical.

walshemj 6y ago

Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.

yesenadam 6y ago
> Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once. > And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost. That seems to me a low-quality comment, sorry. The lack of punctuation and the spelling mistakes made it hard to parse, and until you flesh it out more, I'm not sure precisely what point you were trying to make. And more mentioning, less "lets not mention"-ing, please.
- walshemj 6y ago
  its two sentences mate ok first one it should be one of - I am dyslexic go sue me