3 ms·

If you were a carpenter, you wouldn't tell your friends "I hammer things all day", you'd tell them that you make things out of wood. I'd argue that the fact tha

If you were a carpenter, you wouldn't tell your friends "I hammer things all day", you'd tell them that you make things out of wood. I'd argue that the fact that you spend your day "programming" is more of an implementation detail of the bigger picture that your job is to create software.

forensic 15y ago
If you were a carpenter, you'd tell your friends you're a carpenter. If you were a janitor, you'd tell your friends you're a sanitation worker. If you were a stripper, you'd tell your friends you're an exotic dancer. Patio is saying we should say "engineer" instead of "programmer" because programmer has similar connotations to janitor.
- screwt 15y ago
  In my experience, 'engineer' has closer connotations to janitor than 'programmer'. Certainly in the UK, engineering as a profession has a big image problem because the average person doesn't distinguish between e.g. a heating engineer (who fixes the boiler) and say, a civil engineer (someone with a Masters degree + 4 years professional experience and accreditation). People I know who are programmers all have professional jobs and by and large are earning more than those I know who are engineers. That's probably not a representative sample of 'programmers' though. tl;dr: 'engineer' doesn't sound too professional either, at least in the UK. IMO Software Developer sounds better than either, and that's what I tell people I am.
  - forensic 15y ago
    In North America an engineer is either a train operator, someone with a university degree in "Engineering", or a programmer. So you can see the difference.
  - LargeWu 15y ago
    What you describe as an engineer would probably be called a technician here in the US - somebody with a relatively specialized skill set whose responsibilities are mainly operation or maintenance of equipment or systems.

3 ms·

If you were a carpenter, you wouldn't tell your friends "I hammer things all day", you'd tell them that you make things out of wood. I'd argue that the fact tha

by lazerwalker 15y ago

forensic 15y ago
If you were a carpenter, you'd tell your friends you're a carpenter. If you were a janitor, you'd tell your friends you're a sanitation worker. If you were a stripper, you'd tell your friends you're an exotic dancer. Patio is saying we should say "engineer" instead of "programmer" because programmer has similar connotations to janitor.
- screwt 15y ago
  In my experience, 'engineer' has closer connotations to janitor than 'programmer'. Certainly in the UK, engineering as a profession has a big image problem because the average person doesn't distinguish between e.g. a heating engineer (who fixes the boiler) and say, a civil engineer (someone with a Masters degree + 4 years professional experience and accreditation). People I know who are programmers all have professional jobs and by and large are earning more than those I know who are engineers. That's probably not a representative sample of 'programmers' though. tl;dr: 'engineer' doesn't sound too professional either, at least in the UK. IMO Software Developer sounds better than either, and that's what I tell people I am.
  - forensic 15y ago
    In North America an engineer is either a train operator, someone with a university degree in "Engineering", or a programmer. So you can see the difference.
  - LargeWu 15y ago
    What you describe as an engineer would probably be called a technician here in the US - somebody with a relatively specialized skill set whose responsibilities are mainly operation or maintenance of equipment or systems.