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I think this is the key point, and it's one I'd agree with "...software engineering is real engineering, but a lot of people who write software aren’t doing sof

I think this is the key point, and it's one I'd agree with "...software engineering is real engineering, but a lot of people who write software aren’t doing software engineering." Personally I would probably draw the circle of software engineers fairly tightly and acknowledge that the rest of us are programmers, or developers, or software architects, or plumbers. I'd certainly exclude someone like myself from the magic circle of software engineer. My career started accidentally in economic and environmental modeling (ah GAMS, my psycho ex, how I miss you), currently involves creating addons for Blender, went through a brief CRUD app phase back when Facebook was young (shudder) and has involved random trips into data science at various points. I'd also exclude virtually everyone I've ever worked with if I'm honest because most of what I've worked on has either been bespoke and artisanal and so was been software crafting, or it's essentially been plumbing together systems designed by real software engineers and then prettying up the resultant monster. Despite that I've had the title software engineer a few times, as have lots of my colleagues. I'm not sure that the author is right in saying that it is easier for programmers to transform into software engineers than tradesmen into real engineers. I definitely think that in both cases some seriously heavy training and a lot of unlearning needs to be done.

nicktorba 5y ago
The reason it is easier for programmers to transform into software engineers is the same reason we are having this conversation. For the most part, I think this is because software is so cheap and accessible. Anyone can become a software artisan with just a laptop and time. For traditional engineering, you need resources. Here's a quote from the second post: "When it comes to things like making circuit boards, it’s pretty common for things not to work the first time. You have to do it again, and you have to send it out to the factory and do it again. You know it costs you another however many £1000 and another two weeks on the schedule. -Mike (electrical)" If building software was expensive like engineering in the physical world, we wouldn't have to have this argument. It's too bad that physical engineering is so expensive, because we'd probably have a lot more people trying it out.

nicktorba 5y ago

The reason it is easier for programmers to transform into software engineers is the same reason we are having this conversation. For the most part, I think this is because software is so cheap and accessible. Anyone can become a software artisan with just a laptop and time. For traditional engineering, you need resources. Here's a quote from the second post: "When it comes to things like making circuit boards, it’s pretty common for things not to work the first time. You have to do it again, and you have to send it out to the factory and do it again. You know it costs you another however many £1000 and another two weeks on the schedule. -Mike (electrical)" If building software was expensive like engineering in the physical world, we wouldn't have to have this argument. It's too bad that physical engineering is so expensive, because we'd probably have a lot more people trying it out.