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If only I could upvote this comment more. The software engineering industry has a loooong way to go, and we'd be much better served if more people actually got
by voidhorse 2y ago
If only I could upvote this comment more. The software engineering industry has a loooong way to go, and we'd be much better served if more people actually got it and thought like you instead of wasting time on things like language wars. That's not to say we shouldn't continually strive for better languages, just as we continually strive for better materials to build bridges with, but proselytizing for a language is a complete waste of time when half of the so-called engineers in this so-called engineering discipline do not even realize that engineering is not mere programming. It'd be analogous to the civil engineering discipline spending thousands of hours debating which materials are better before even figuring out how to actually construct a bridge, out of any material consistently and within boundary conditions.
The fact that we call software engineering "engineering" is still a complete joke in the majority of cases (there are exceptions of course) at this point in time.
- MrMcCall 2y agoYes yes. I use the term "software engineering" aspirationally, not as statement of fact :-)
- revskill 2y agoEngineering only when the software is correctly verified.
- kstrauser 2y agoWell, to a point. It feels like some engineers are proposing to start building bridges out of wood, and others want to keep building them out of spoons and toothpaste, just like their pappy did.
- ghssds 2y agoI have a hard time understanding why programmers so much want to be called software engineers. Lawyers don't want to be called contract engineers. Writers don't want to be called text engineers. Film directors don't want to be called movie engineers. The industry has a long way to go for sure, but maybe it's not to become better engineers but to better understand that they aren't engineers after all.
- mike_hearn 2y agoWhy do civil engineers want to be called engineers? They don't work with engines. Computing is full of metaphors. There are also software architects, who don't design buildings, but "software designer" is not the term the industry settled on. Nobody would care if it did, it just didn't.
- defrost 2y agoNeither ingeniare nor ingenium are scope limited to mechanical engines.
- Maxatar 2y agoEngineer does not come from engine, rather both words are derived from the Latin word ingeniator, which means to devise.
- mike_hearn 2y agoTIL, thanks! But then if that's what it originally means, it seems pretty appropriate for what software engineers do?
- xmcqdpt2 2y agoSome software is engineered but not all of it by a long shot, IMO. I'm not an engineer, I'm a programmer. Engineering is all about certifications and contracts and laws and codes of conducts. Engineers don't build the bridges themselves, there are many layers of delegations to the guy who actually operates the crane or puts in the rivets. Most programming done today is craftsmanship not engineering. We have the freedom to implement the same thing in multiple wildly different ways, there are famous "masters" with lots of opinions, on the job programming is still taught in an apprenticeship kind of way, there are consultancies that act effectively like studios or workshops, I type my own code with my own hands, etc. Software is basically still in the artisan era. I for one much prefer the current state and would probably do something else if software was fully professionalized. I would hate to just design some high level spec out of well-known reusable parts, with massive legal and contractual requirements, to be implemented by massive teams of contractors.