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> So a plumber is an engineer Yeah, we call them civil engineers. In the US, in order to be an engineer one either had to have a license to call themselves an

> So a plumber is an engineer Yeah, we call them civil engineers. In the US, in order to be an engineer one either had to have a license to call themselves an engineer, or a company could confer that title to employees. These days, it's less about the specific education, and instead the process of solving problems. Engineering is a discipline which may be applied to many domains, including software. I define an engineer as someone who uses fundamental principles and processes of science and engineering to solve real world problems. Our customers need to ask a skilled expert a question and receive an answer. If I merely implemented code to achieve this goal, I would not consider that engineering, but rather coding. Instead, if I first defined the problem statement, gathered requirements, documented assumptions, broke down the problem into discrete deliverables, defined metrics and success criteria, and created a plan of record, that would be engineering. I have a formal education in engineering, and aside from the mathematical and science fundamentals required for engineering, a large portion of my education was dedicated to the process of solving problems (also proudly, a good portion was dedicated to learning about ethics as well).

crdrost 5y ago
You've got one of the big words that I would insert into this discussion -- science. I think the two biggest words missing from here are "science" and "risk." As Alan Kay puts it, science is about getting a description elegant enough that, like the Maxwell equations or Lisp's metacircular evaluator, it fits on a T-shirt. And engineering is about taking that T-shirt and building a bigger more ambitious bridge than anyone could have attempted if they didn't know about forces and stresses and scientific metallurgy. Engineering involves risk tradeoffs, and if your developers are not making your risk decisions then they are not engineers -- and also you're going to spend a lot more money producing software (the authority to do risk assessment should always be as close to the "in the trenches" work as possible, every degree of removal invites the risk decisions to be made on lower-quality more-aggregated more-gutfeel information rather than clear metrics). Most of computer programming is instead tinkering -- build a proof of concept, put it under stress, see what is being stressed, buttress those parts. The fundamental idea of architecture, "let's add some structure in advance so that we can build a self-sustaining system and take away the scaffolding later," is only really seen today maybe in test suites or so? Those are the scaffolds of our day I think. We're still in very early years for computing as a proper engineering discipline. But at least we do make some simple risk calculations.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  > Most of computer programming is instead tinkering Most of mechanical engineering is still tinkering. Not all problems are solved. Many of the people here pining for "real engineering in software" need more interdisciplinary experience, ffs.
  - balls187 5y ago
    Interdisciplinary experience is something I most engineering educations provide. I can only speak from my undergrad experience, but almost every engineering discipline took the same background courses, as well as mechanical, thermal, fluid, and electrical engineering classes and from there, went on to take courses related directly to their field. From my experience, tinkering is another way to say prototyping or building a proof of concept. As we've gained experience, the need to prototype the same solutions decreases, but when learning new tools and methodologies, experimenting and prototyping is very much part of the engineering process.
Godel_unicode 5y ago
> we call them civil engineers. We do not. Civil engineer is a specific thing, with training, education, and licensing. The person who designed the system being installed or serviced was likely a civil engineer, the plumber is a plumber. And that's ok, everyone doesn't have to be an engineer. Being an engineer isn't inherently better than being a non-engineer. > an engineer as someone who uses fundamental principles and processes of science and engineering Do you see how saying an engineer is someone who does engineering isn't useful to other people? I'm sure you know what you mean, but basically everyone is and is not an engineer according to your definition.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  A plumber with enough experience can do engineer-y things, e.g. design an appropriate plumbing system for a house or renovation. Or a plumber can just be a guy following a plan and cutting and gluing pipes together.
  - bumby 5y ago
    But they cannot stamp a design, meaning it's not legal (depending on scope and permitting requirements). I can tell a person what ails them if they give me a list of symptoms but that shouldn't be conflated with me practicing medicine as a doctor. An HVAC technician can lay out a design for, say an operating room, but a licensed engineer is the only one who can stamp it saying it meets standards for ventilation. This where the fuzzy terms of "engineer-y" can get us into trouble. ~engineerish != engineer
- balls187 5y ago
  > We do not. Civil engineer is a specific thing, with training, education, and licensing. Yes. That is the joke (among non-civil engineers with civil engineer friends). > Do you see how saying an engineer is someone who does engineering isn't useful to other people? No. Because that is not what I wrote. I also provided a concrete problem, along with an engineering and non-engineering approach to solving it.
bumby 5y ago
>a good portion was dedicated to learning about ethics as well). This is the first I've seen this point in the discussion. Engineering is considered a profession, distinct from a vocation. The term derives from professing an oath to serve the public in an ethical manner. If developers had to take a similar oath, I wonder if it would open them up to civil/criminal liability when they acted unethically (e.g., creating code in a social media application with the goal of manipulating behavior for profit)

crdrost 5y ago

You've got one of the big words that I would insert into this discussion -- science. I think the two biggest words missing from here are "science" and "risk." As Alan Kay puts it, science is about getting a description elegant enough that, like the Maxwell equations or Lisp's metacircular evaluator, it fits on a T-shirt. And engineering is about taking that T-shirt and building a bigger more ambitious bridge than anyone could have attempted if they didn't know about forces and stresses and scientific metallurgy. Engineering involves risk tradeoffs, and if your developers are not making your risk decisions then they are not engineers -- and also you're going to spend a lot more money producing software (the authority to do risk assessment should always be as close to the "in the trenches" work as possible, every degree of removal invites the risk decisions to be made on lower-quality more-aggregated more-gutfeel information rather than clear metrics). Most of computer programming is instead tinkering -- build a proof of concept, put it under stress, see what is being stressed, buttress those parts. The fundamental idea of architecture, "let's add some structure in advance so that we can build a self-sustaining system and take away the scaffolding later," is only really seen today maybe in test suites or so? Those are the scaffolds of our day I think. We're still in very early years for computing as a proper engineering discipline. But at least we do make some simple risk calculations.

R0b0t1 5y ago
> Most of computer programming is instead tinkering Most of mechanical engineering is still tinkering. Not all problems are solved. Many of the people here pining for "real engineering in software" need more interdisciplinary experience, ffs.
- balls187 5y ago
  Interdisciplinary experience is something I most engineering educations provide. I can only speak from my undergrad experience, but almost every engineering discipline took the same background courses, as well as mechanical, thermal, fluid, and electrical engineering classes and from there, went on to take courses related directly to their field. From my experience, tinkering is another way to say prototyping or building a proof of concept. As we've gained experience, the need to prototype the same solutions decreases, but when learning new tools and methodologies, experimenting and prototyping is very much part of the engineering process.

Godel_unicode 5y ago

> we call them civil engineers. We do not. Civil engineer is a specific thing, with training, education, and licensing. The person who designed the system being installed or serviced was likely a civil engineer, the plumber is a plumber. And that's ok, everyone doesn't have to be an engineer. Being an engineer isn't inherently better than being a non-engineer. > an engineer as someone who uses fundamental principles and processes of science and engineering Do you see how saying an engineer is someone who does engineering isn't useful to other people? I'm sure you know what you mean, but basically everyone is and is not an engineer according to your definition.

throwawayboise 5y ago
A plumber with enough experience can do engineer-y things, e.g. design an appropriate plumbing system for a house or renovation. Or a plumber can just be a guy following a plan and cutting and gluing pipes together.
- bumby 5y ago
  But they cannot stamp a design, meaning it's not legal (depending on scope and permitting requirements). I can tell a person what ails them if they give me a list of symptoms but that shouldn't be conflated with me practicing medicine as a doctor. An HVAC technician can lay out a design for, say an operating room, but a licensed engineer is the only one who can stamp it saying it meets standards for ventilation. This where the fuzzy terms of "engineer-y" can get us into trouble. ~engineerish != engineer
balls187 5y ago
> We do not. Civil engineer is a specific thing, with training, education, and licensing. Yes. That is the joke (among non-civil engineers with civil engineer friends). > Do you see how saying an engineer is someone who does engineering isn't useful to other people? No. Because that is not what I wrote. I also provided a concrete problem, along with an engineering and non-engineering approach to solving it.

bumby 5y ago

>a good portion was dedicated to learning about ethics as well). This is the first I've seen this point in the discussion. Engineering is considered a profession, distinct from a vocation. The term derives from professing an oath to serve the public in an ethical manner. If developers had to take a similar oath, I wonder if it would open them up to civil/criminal liability when they acted unethically (e.g., creating code in a social media application with the goal of manipulating behavior for profit)