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This article is just gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason. When I was developing an agent recently I picked a model (thus fixing most of the "uncertain

This article is just gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason. When I was developing an agent recently I picked a model (thus fixing most of the "uncertainties" mentioned) and started to construct the system prompt, from simpler to more complex, sometimes back to simpler, discovering that to this particular model the name choice means a lot, observing how often I was or wasn't getting desired results, etc etc. I think it would be challenging to find a definition of the word "engineer" that wouldn't include this process, even if it, obviously, wasn't as complex as some other engineering projects.

exe34 1y ago
Honestly if we call software "engineering" in the first place, without any kind of certification/liability, I don't see the problem with applying it to everything else.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Indeed. Engineer is a silly word to gatekeep. Its original literal meaning is just someone who builds engines (in the original, broader sense of “engines” which basically means “machines”). The appropriation of the term to mean formalized categories with certifications etc. came hundreds of years later.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    I doubt that's the origin, since "ingegno" means cleverness in italian…
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      Well instead of doubting, you can just look it up on wiktionary.
      - LtWorf 1y ago
        You could have done it yourself but you chose to post disinformation instead.
    - danans 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure the Italian word "ingegno" (like English "ingenious") comes from the same Latin root as "engine": ingenium, meaning "mind or intellect", with "engine" changing its pronunciation and meaning via medieval French.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    A word being fuzzy does not mean it has no meaning and that it can therefore be used for anything. A word being used in a particular (but fuzzy) way hundreds of years ago does not mean that it can't have a different (and fuzzy) meaning today. Yes, words drift, but the vague fuzzy notion that engineering meant 20 years ago still has value, and if the word has lost that meaning with no replacement, that's a problem.
voidhorse 1y ago
All sorts of human activities involve processes like this. Art, for instance. Engineering is about precision it's not about this fuzzy sort of "iterate til it works" approach. Sure, iterations is involved, but knowing the precise conditions and bounds under which a system functions in a specific way is what engineering is actually about. I would not want a person building a bridge to use your process of iteration and guess work. Yes, under this idea a lot of software engineering isn't actual engineering.
- TJSomething 1y ago
  Under this idea, most engineering isn't engineering. Some of the oldest engineering is ad hoc battlefield engineering to construct siege engines and building tunnels to deliver explosives. That frequently only needed to work one time. With bridges, you only need that high confidence because there are high costs and risks. Also, the stakeholders are usually governments, who require very predictable results. All that effort is worth it because the artifact will be useful for a long time for a lot of people. It might be okay if some widget only lasts for 6 months. So, you empirically shave off material until it's as cheap as possible while failing at an acceptable rate. The cost of shipping is low for software, so the risk profile is even more different. This can be shifted for high stakes software and I think there are some social issues there, but many things are shaped more like Facebook than aircraft control systems. They can fall over and no one's going to actually die. I think the core of engineering is in evaluating these tradeoffs and figuring out where you can expend effort most efficiently.
StrLght 1y ago
You've described what sounds a lot like experimentation: observing how a black box behaves on different inputs. Conducting experiments is closely related to engineering — I don't think anyone would claim different. But engineering is not limited to experimentation alone.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  What level of threshold of illustration do you need to reach for it to be properly said that you are drawing? What's the analogous threshold to say you're engineering?
  - StrLght 1y ago
    Art is subjective. It isn't about checking boxes and counting how many formal criteria it meets. Engineering is broad, it uses many different methods and techniques. All I am saying is that I wouldn't call someone a mathematician if they can only find the result of 2+2.
    - handfuloflight 1y ago
      You say art is subjective but didn't answer the question: what are the objective criteria that define engineering?
tiahura 1y ago
gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason There was value in the word Engineer connoting professionalism and accountability. Checkers and draftsmen were checkers and draftsmen, not engineers. Then, anyone who knew the difference between a patch cable and a crossover cable became a network engineer.
- ineedasername 1y ago
  And anyone running a few ETL flows is a Data Engineer. The gatekeeper holding closed the barn door on "engineer" got trampled long ago. Near as I can tell, it happened in the 90's, around the time lots of comp sci grads started hitting the profession, at a time when lots of programmers already in the field had come over from electrical engineering.
NotAnOtter 1y ago
Words have meaning. I'm not a prescriptivist but when you have an army of formerly PM's, Designers, etc all at once exclaiming "I'm an engineer too!" that should signal that maybe the thing they're doing isn't really engineering. Do you count making a square space splash page 'engineering'? Tools improving to the point that the barrier of entry plummets is great. That doesn't mean you're now engaging in the same fundamental task that happened before things got easier/
- echohack5 1y ago
  If the thing standing in your way to engineering a great product was syntax, and a bunch of gate-kept and inconsistent linux cli tooling, then its fine to call it engineering. I dunno, do you read bytecode?
  - GeneralMayhem 1y ago
    I don't think that's the point. If non-technical people are able to make a product happen by asking a machine to do it for them, that's fine. But they're not engineering. It simply means that engineering is no longer required to make such a product. Engineering is the act of solving problems. If there are no problems to solve, then maybe you've brought about the product, but you haven't "engineered" it. I don't think that memorizing arcane Linux CLI invocations is "engineering" either, to be clear.
    - thunky 1y ago
      If I were to "build" the next big app entirely using llms, never writing a line of code, did I create it and do I own it? If you answered yes that's really all that matters imo. Label me what you want.
      - toofy 1y ago
        If you hired people to build that product, you never wrote a line of code. No, you didn’t build it. Your team did. You’re not magically a software engineer, you hired someone else to do it. Is there a product? Yep. Do you own it? Maybe. But again, you’re not suddenly the engineer. A project manager? Maybe.
kec 1y ago
Well, according to ABET Engineering is: “The profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind”. By that definition, developing and training an LLM model could be argued to be a form of engineering… but exercising that model definitely isn’t. An analogy to mechanical engineering would be the difference between designing a CNC machine vs programming the machine to carve out a widget.
reaperducer 1y ago
This article is just gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason. For a while in the 80's it was a pop culture joke that everyone was an "engineer." Trashman: Sanitation engineer Housewife: Domestic engineer and so on. The modern tech industry comes along and missed the part where the rest of society isn't impressed by slapping "engineer" at the end of your title unless you have a specific licensee or degree.

exe34 1y ago

Honestly if we call software "engineering" in the first place, without any kind of certification/liability, I don't see the problem with applying it to everything else.

School-Cotton 1y ago
Indeed. Engineer is a silly word to gatekeep. Its original literal meaning is just someone who builds engines (in the original, broader sense of “engines” which basically means “machines”). The appropriation of the term to mean formalized categories with certifications etc. came hundreds of years later.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  I doubt that's the origin, since "ingegno" means cleverness in italian…
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    Well instead of doubting, you can just look it up on wiktionary.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      You could have done it yourself but you chose to post disinformation instead.
  - danans 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure the Italian word "ingegno" (like English "ingenious") comes from the same Latin root as "engine": ingenium, meaning "mind or intellect", with "engine" changing its pronunciation and meaning via medieval French.
- cwillu 1y ago
  A word being fuzzy does not mean it has no meaning and that it can therefore be used for anything. A word being used in a particular (but fuzzy) way hundreds of years ago does not mean that it can't have a different (and fuzzy) meaning today. Yes, words drift, but the vague fuzzy notion that engineering meant 20 years ago still has value, and if the word has lost that meaning with no replacement, that's a problem.

voidhorse 1y ago

All sorts of human activities involve processes like this. Art, for instance. Engineering is about precision it's not about this fuzzy sort of "iterate til it works" approach. Sure, iterations is involved, but knowing the precise conditions and bounds under which a system functions in a specific way is what engineering is actually about. I would not want a person building a bridge to use your process of iteration and guess work. Yes, under this idea a lot of software engineering isn't actual engineering.

TJSomething 1y ago
Under this idea, most engineering isn't engineering. Some of the oldest engineering is ad hoc battlefield engineering to construct siege engines and building tunnels to deliver explosives. That frequently only needed to work one time. With bridges, you only need that high confidence because there are high costs and risks. Also, the stakeholders are usually governments, who require very predictable results. All that effort is worth it because the artifact will be useful for a long time for a lot of people. It might be okay if some widget only lasts for 6 months. So, you empirically shave off material until it's as cheap as possible while failing at an acceptable rate. The cost of shipping is low for software, so the risk profile is even more different. This can be shifted for high stakes software and I think there are some social issues there, but many things are shaped more like Facebook than aircraft control systems. They can fall over and no one's going to actually die. I think the core of engineering is in evaluating these tradeoffs and figuring out where you can expend effort most efficiently.

StrLght 1y ago

You've described what sounds a lot like experimentation: observing how a black box behaves on different inputs. Conducting experiments is closely related to engineering — I don't think anyone would claim different. But engineering is not limited to experimentation alone.

handfuloflight 1y ago
What level of threshold of illustration do you need to reach for it to be properly said that you are drawing? What's the analogous threshold to say you're engineering?
- StrLght 1y ago
  Art is subjective. It isn't about checking boxes and counting how many formal criteria it meets. Engineering is broad, it uses many different methods and techniques. All I am saying is that I wouldn't call someone a mathematician if they can only find the result of 2+2.
  - handfuloflight 1y ago
    You say art is subjective but didn't answer the question: what are the objective criteria that define engineering?

tiahura 1y ago

gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason There was value in the word Engineer connoting professionalism and accountability. Checkers and draftsmen were checkers and draftsmen, not engineers. Then, anyone who knew the difference between a patch cable and a crossover cable became a network engineer.

ineedasername 1y ago
And anyone running a few ETL flows is a Data Engineer. The gatekeeper holding closed the barn door on "engineer" got trampled long ago. Near as I can tell, it happened in the 90's, around the time lots of comp sci grads started hitting the profession, at a time when lots of programmers already in the field had come over from electrical engineering.

NotAnOtter 1y ago

Words have meaning. I'm not a prescriptivist but when you have an army of formerly PM's, Designers, etc all at once exclaiming "I'm an engineer too!" that should signal that maybe the thing they're doing isn't really engineering. Do you count making a square space splash page 'engineering'? Tools improving to the point that the barrier of entry plummets is great. That doesn't mean you're now engaging in the same fundamental task that happened before things got easier/

echohack5 1y ago
If the thing standing in your way to engineering a great product was syntax, and a bunch of gate-kept and inconsistent linux cli tooling, then its fine to call it engineering. I dunno, do you read bytecode?
- GeneralMayhem 1y ago
  I don't think that's the point. If non-technical people are able to make a product happen by asking a machine to do it for them, that's fine. But they're not engineering. It simply means that engineering is no longer required to make such a product. Engineering is the act of solving problems. If there are no problems to solve, then maybe you've brought about the product, but you haven't "engineered" it. I don't think that memorizing arcane Linux CLI invocations is "engineering" either, to be clear.
  - thunky 1y ago
    If I were to "build" the next big app entirely using llms, never writing a line of code, did I create it and do I own it? If you answered yes that's really all that matters imo. Label me what you want.
    - toofy 1y ago
      If you hired people to build that product, you never wrote a line of code. No, you didn’t build it. Your team did. You’re not magically a software engineer, you hired someone else to do it. Is there a product? Yep. Do you own it? Maybe. But again, you’re not suddenly the engineer. A project manager? Maybe.

kec 1y ago

Well, according to ABET Engineering is: “The profession in which a knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgment to develop ways to utilize, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind”. By that definition, developing and training an LLM model could be argued to be a form of engineering… but exercising that model definitely isn’t. An analogy to mechanical engineering would be the difference between designing a CNC machine vs programming the machine to carve out a widget.

reaperducer 1y ago

This article is just gatekeeping the word "engineer" for no reason. For a while in the 80's it was a pop culture joke that everyone was an "engineer." Trashman: Sanitation engineer Housewife: Domestic engineer and so on. The modern tech industry comes along and missed the part where the rest of society isn't impressed by slapping "engineer" at the end of your title unless you have a specific licensee or degree.