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Do you think engineers existed prior to the 18/19th century when degrees became a thing? It seems problematic to your definition that most of the wiki page on
by AlotOfReading 5y ago
Do you think engineers existed prior to the 18/19th century when degrees became a thing? It seems problematic to your definition that most of the wiki page on engineering is dedicated to things done by non-engineers.
- tkiolp4 5y agoIt’s a simplistic definition. Since the topic of calling developers engineers is rather superfluous, I think we should go for simple definitions.
- kelseyfrog 5y agoI can think of many simple yet incorrect definitions. They have as much utility as this one.
- ctxDpnds72 5y ago
- a_wild_dandan 5y agoAlso there are people without any degrees that do far more engineering than many developers who hold software engineering degrees.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThe engineering process is to apply design tools to architect a solution with expected performance before anything is built. In traditional engineering this generally boils down to mathematical models that dependably replicate expected behaviors to a known degree of error. Building happens after the modeling says a solution is possible. With software, true engineering only happens if the development model can follow such a process. Nobody wants to put in the work to do this for all code though.
- closeparen 5y agoUpfront-heavy design is a cost saving adaptation to the constraint that experimentation with large scale structures is expensive. Even then, traditional engineering disciplines are very much into prototypes, scale models, and intricate test and measurement apparatus.
- shkkmo 5y agoUpfront design is one of the methodologies of engineering but so is trial and error. Being a good engineer is adopting the right combination of methodologies to fit the problem space. Being a good software engineer means knowing what you should plan out in advance and what you need to test and design as you go.