Also a previous engineer (Systems & radar engineer on DoD projects like missile defense, avionics, etc) and now software engineer. Definitely disagree on both p

Also a previous engineer (Systems & radar engineer on DoD projects like missile defense, avionics, etc) and now software engineer. Definitely disagree on both points. > (a) If it's regularly expected that you ship bugs, you might be in a discipline that is distinct from engineering.[0] Every system has bugs. If you aren't expecting, controlling for them, and implementing measures to reduce their impact and likelihood - you might be in a discipline that is distinct from engineering. Why else would redundancy be a critical requirement in just about any mission critical systems? > (b) If you can usually reach for an abstraction to save you, you might be working in something that isn't engineering.[1] Well in radar, missile defense, helicopter systems, it was all abstractions up and down the stack. Maybe the 1000 engineers working on these projects weren't all real engineers? You have to use abstractions if you want to do anything real. You are regularly using models, simulations, tools, integrating with other teams' systems/components which become abstractions.