5 ms·

The prejudice seems to be everywhere. Unfortunately, to my knowledge. Eg. architects vs construction engineers vs land surveyors vs construction designers vs u

by sixtyj 3mo ago

The prejudice seems to be everywhere. Unfortunately, to my knowledge. Eg. architects vs construction engineers vs land surveyors vs construction designers vs urban planners… anyone of them thinks that their profession is more valuable than the others…

hiyfsch 3mo ago
[dead]
- thaumasiotes 3mo ago
  > Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. This is a fundamentalist perspective; it's hard to dispute that if we didn't have any roads, houses, or cat videos, we would need new roads more than we needed new cat videos. It's much easier to dispute the idea that we currently need new roads more than we need new cat videos; we already have a lot of roads.
  - j-bos 3mo ago
    Yeah and a lot of the guys who actually do the work of building roads learn and upskill off youtube.
- sutibb 3mo ago
  [dead]
- john01dav 3mo ago
  > Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. Software does more than cat videos. Examples that may be relevant: - CAD and simulation tools that physical world engineers use - telecommunications (not just programmers, but programmers are vital for the current ultra-cheap generation) - CT and MRI data processing - alphafold - scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable) - infrastructure/systems programming (OS, web browser, etc.) Furthermore, no one would claim that civil engineering is useless just because a certain class of billionaires liked to hire them to design silly structures. So, the prevalence of the less useful things speaks more to priorities as a society than anything about software engineering itself
  - hiyfsch 3mo ago
    I do realize this and the cat video mention was really me being facetious. And honestly software engineers don’t need roads anyway working a tough four-day work week with long commute into the basement. Jokes aside, innovation comes at a price. Every great thing will be turned into a weapon so just wait until the alpha-fold mutants start crawling out of a nearby sewage treatment plant.
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 3mo ago
    Conveniently, those are the subdomains of the tech industry that require a deep understanding of CS theory (eg embedded systems) and DS&A, and yet whenever the subject of Leetcode comes up on HN, software “engineers” swoop in to argue how useless those are as a whole to 90% of the software being built in the world today… Which, really, implies that 90% of people in this industry work in bullshit jobs that don’t require real engineering skills. You could even spout any BS about architecture in Medium.com and then asked to speak in a conference if it gets enough views.
    - AlotOfReading 3mo ago
      How does embedded require deep understanding of CS? I work on embedded systems (safety critical no less) and while I can point out how they're actually distributed systems or x theorem is applicable all day, my coworkers don't actually need that info to do their jobs. C and the various C++ subsets called "C with templates" would be much less common than they are if "deep understandings of CS and DS&A" were required in day to day work.
  - btschaegg 3mo ago
    Your right, as are your examples, but I want to point out an interesting thing about your examples :) > - CT and MRI data processing > - scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable) Those two read as if they are of different urgency (#1: whoever needs it urgently is at risk of dying, schedules for "non-urgent" cases will be affected for months, turning many into urgent cases; #2: the education systems will suffer, but it only gets dire after multiple days), until you realize that #2 also applies to e.g. hospitals. Medicine at scale is already barely scraping by as it is (see: overworked staff etc. etc.), but disrupt the internal IT working of hospitals and the indirect body count will rise fast.
- nwallin 3mo ago
  > Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. If the software made by my company ceased to exist, every government in the US, federal, state, and municipal, every construction company, plus most governments worldwide would be unable to build roads or houses until they were able to cobble together a replacement. The entire world runs on software. Software controls our banks, flies our planes, decides what happens when you press the brake pedal in your car. The bridges you drive, walk, or ride across were modeled in software and simulated to determine whether they needed to be built stronger. The power companies use software to route power across the grid. Software drives servos which determine how much natural gas and air get pumped into our power plants. Every day, power producers and power consumers bid on how much they will pay for electricity at certain times tomorrow, and all of that is automated by software. Judges and lawyers file motions electronically, routed through software. Two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a memorandum of understanding, opening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was in Versaille, Pezeshkian was in Tehran, Sharif was in Islamabad; the agreement was signed digitally, with software. If every computer on earth stopped working tomorrow, we wouldn't notice the lack of cat videos, but we would notice the complete collapse of civilization.
  - chirau 3mo ago
    As a 'software engineer' myself, I fully understand your position, but please qualify the statement about the software you work on. Either add 'efficiently' or 'at scale', because all that infrastructure you mentioned could definitely be built without your software. It was possible before your software and it sure would be possible without it, it just would not be as easy. I am sure someone is going to dwell on that if not fixed.
    - maccard 3mo ago
      This is silly. People survived before the Haber Bosch process but an overnight removal of it from the world would absolutely result in a catastrophic collapse. If you want to be reductive, we’re all going to die due to entropy anyway, it will all balance out so there’s no point in doing anything at all.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  >The real differentiator though is that the engineers of tangible things can get sued and go to jail if someone dies, That basically never happens because the license wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on if it didn't essentially protect you from your own stupidity. Any credentialed professional basically has to be farcically negligent for anything to stick and even if it does damage is usually limited by statute. That's the whole point. The industry basically strikes a bargain with government to it's benefit. Government lets me run a supply cartel, I promise to enforce minimum standards along the way. Government gives me favorable treatment in court, I do whatever the government's rules say to the detriment of my customers. Society gets just enough scraps to provide the political will to get it done.
tryagainian 3mo ago
[flagged]
- youarenaive343 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tryagainian 3mo ago
    You’re responding to an argument I didn’t make. And looks like you agree that coding isn’t engineering. The first high-level programming language was Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945.[2] The first high-level language to have an associated compiler was created by Corrado Böhm in 1951, for his PhD thesis. How long are you going to keep claiming programming is a brand new discipline? Okay, engineering proper has thousands of years of history. But it’s not like coding came down in the last shower. Fair enough that any random app probably doesn’t need to be probably correct. And that’s why it’s not engineering. The practice of coding is a science and an art. I guess we should make a distinction between Engineering and engineering. Lower case e engineering is the design and manufacture of complex product - in which case, sure coding is engineering, and coders are engineers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag...
  - saghm 3mo ago
    I don't see why it's inconsistent to claim that programming is not engineering today while leaving the door open to the idea that maybe someday it will be. If anything, that seems in line with the criticism of the incentive structure and priorities of the ecosystem; someone who didn't think it was ever possible would more likely object on technical grounds rather than social ones.
  - pdpi 3mo ago
    > We're still figuring all this out. The defining feature of engineering as a profession isn't how much we collectively know about it, it's the attitude we bring into day-to-day practice. Take something like the Sony BMG rootkit scandal[0]. Anybody with an ounce of sense and even basic technical programming knowledge could tell the sort of security issues that that piece of software could lead to. Shipping that thing was the sort of recklessness that would get you stricken from any industry's professional body. Or maybe something like the UK's Post Office scandal[1]. One of the issues there was that post offices sold foreign currency. People were accused of (and actually jailed for) fraud because their branch sold $100, there's £70 in the till, and the reconciliation process says that the exchange rate is $100:£80, so there's £10 missing. Horizon had no way to track that the exchange rate at the time of the transaction was $100:£70, they literally shipped a billing system that handles ForEx but doesn't understand exchange rates change over time. And then they lied about it and said the software was working correctly! This isn't an issue with "revolutionary new tech" that we don't fully understand, it's simply a fruit of having an accounting system designed with no actual accountants in the loop. If an accountant had made this exact same mistake, their licence would almost certainly be revoked, but it's somehow ok because computers are involved? > If so, then maybe we can talk about getting bureaucrats involved to make up a bunch of rules and regulations to control everybody We don't need "a bunch" of rules and regulations. We only need one: You're liable for damages resulting from reasonably predictable outcomes, as judged by a panel of your peers. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

by sixtyj 3mo ago

hiyfsch 3mo ago

[dead]

thaumasiotes 3mo ago
> Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. This is a fundamentalist perspective; it's hard to dispute that if we didn't have any roads, houses, or cat videos, we would need new roads more than we needed new cat videos. It's much easier to dispute the idea that we currently need new roads more than we need new cat videos; we already have a lot of roads.
- j-bos 3mo ago
  Yeah and a lot of the guys who actually do the work of building roads learn and upskill off youtube.
sutibb 3mo ago
[dead]
john01dav 3mo ago
> Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. Software does more than cat videos. Examples that may be relevant: - CAD and simulation tools that physical world engineers use - telecommunications (not just programmers, but programmers are vital for the current ultra-cheap generation) - CT and MRI data processing - alphafold - scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable) - infrastructure/systems programming (OS, web browser, etc.) Furthermore, no one would claim that civil engineering is useless just because a certain class of billionaires liked to hire them to design silly structures. So, the prevalence of the less useful things speaks more to priorities as a society than anything about software engineering itself
- hiyfsch 3mo ago
  I do realize this and the cat video mention was really me being facetious. And honestly software engineers don’t need roads anyway working a tough four-day work week with long commute into the basement. Jokes aside, innovation comes at a price. Every great thing will be turned into a weapon so just wait until the alpha-fold mutants start crawling out of a nearby sewage treatment plant.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3mo ago
  Conveniently, those are the subdomains of the tech industry that require a deep understanding of CS theory (eg embedded systems) and DS&A, and yet whenever the subject of Leetcode comes up on HN, software “engineers” swoop in to argue how useless those are as a whole to 90% of the software being built in the world today… Which, really, implies that 90% of people in this industry work in bullshit jobs that don’t require real engineering skills. You could even spout any BS about architecture in Medium.com and then asked to speak in a conference if it gets enough views.
  - AlotOfReading 3mo ago
    How does embedded require deep understanding of CS? I work on embedded systems (safety critical no less) and while I can point out how they're actually distributed systems or x theorem is applicable all day, my coworkers don't actually need that info to do their jobs. C and the various C++ subsets called "C with templates" would be much less common than they are if "deep understandings of CS and DS&A" were required in day to day work.
- btschaegg 3mo ago
  Your right, as are your examples, but I want to point out an interesting thing about your examples :) > - CT and MRI data processing > - scheduling systems for universities and other schools (makes education more scalable) Those two read as if they are of different urgency (#1: whoever needs it urgently is at risk of dying, schedules for "non-urgent" cases will be affected for months, turning many into urgent cases; #2: the education systems will suffer, but it only gets dire after multiple days), until you realize that #2 also applies to e.g. hospitals. Medicine at scale is already barely scraping by as it is (see: overworked staff etc. etc.), but disrupt the internal IT working of hospitals and the indirect body count will rise fast.
nwallin 3mo ago
> Honestly it’s hard to refute the fact that we need roads and houses more than we need cat videos. If the software made by my company ceased to exist, every government in the US, federal, state, and municipal, every construction company, plus most governments worldwide would be unable to build roads or houses until they were able to cobble together a replacement. The entire world runs on software. Software controls our banks, flies our planes, decides what happens when you press the brake pedal in your car. The bridges you drive, walk, or ride across were modeled in software and simulated to determine whether they needed to be built stronger. The power companies use software to route power across the grid. Software drives servos which determine how much natural gas and air get pumped into our power plants. Every day, power producers and power consumers bid on how much they will pay for electricity at certain times tomorrow, and all of that is automated by software. Judges and lawyers file motions electronically, routed through software. Two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed a memorandum of understanding, opening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump was in Versaille, Pezeshkian was in Tehran, Sharif was in Islamabad; the agreement was signed digitally, with software. If every computer on earth stopped working tomorrow, we wouldn't notice the lack of cat videos, but we would notice the complete collapse of civilization.
- chirau 3mo ago
  As a 'software engineer' myself, I fully understand your position, but please qualify the statement about the software you work on. Either add 'efficiently' or 'at scale', because all that infrastructure you mentioned could definitely be built without your software. It was possible before your software and it sure would be possible without it, it just would not be as easy. I am sure someone is going to dwell on that if not fixed.
  - maccard 3mo ago
    This is silly. People survived before the Haber Bosch process but an overnight removal of it from the world would absolutely result in a catastrophic collapse. If you want to be reductive, we’re all going to die due to entropy anyway, it will all balance out so there’s no point in doing anything at all.
cucumber3732842 3mo ago
>The real differentiator though is that the engineers of tangible things can get sued and go to jail if someone dies, That basically never happens because the license wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on if it didn't essentially protect you from your own stupidity. Any credentialed professional basically has to be farcically negligent for anything to stick and even if it does damage is usually limited by statute. That's the whole point. The industry basically strikes a bargain with government to it's benefit. Government lets me run a supply cartel, I promise to enforce minimum standards along the way. Government gives me favorable treatment in court, I do whatever the government's rules say to the detriment of my customers. Society gets just enough scraps to provide the political will to get it done.

tryagainian 3mo ago

[flagged]

youarenaive343 3mo ago
[flagged]
- tryagainian 3mo ago
  You’re responding to an argument I didn’t make. And looks like you agree that coding isn’t engineering. The first high-level programming language was Plankalkül, created by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945.[2] The first high-level language to have an associated compiler was created by Corrado Böhm in 1951, for his PhD thesis. How long are you going to keep claiming programming is a brand new discipline? Okay, engineering proper has thousands of years of history. But it’s not like coding came down in the last shower. Fair enough that any random app probably doesn’t need to be probably correct. And that’s why it’s not engineering. The practice of coding is a science and an art. I guess we should make a distinction between Engineering and engineering. Lower case e engineering is the design and manufacture of complex product - in which case, sure coding is engineering, and coders are engineers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languag...
- saghm 3mo ago
  I don't see why it's inconsistent to claim that programming is not engineering today while leaving the door open to the idea that maybe someday it will be. If anything, that seems in line with the criticism of the incentive structure and priorities of the ecosystem; someone who didn't think it was ever possible would more likely object on technical grounds rather than social ones.
- pdpi 3mo ago
  > We're still figuring all this out. The defining feature of engineering as a profession isn't how much we collectively know about it, it's the attitude we bring into day-to-day practice. Take something like the Sony BMG rootkit scandal[0]. Anybody with an ounce of sense and even basic technical programming knowledge could tell the sort of security issues that that piece of software could lead to. Shipping that thing was the sort of recklessness that would get you stricken from any industry's professional body. Or maybe something like the UK's Post Office scandal[1]. One of the issues there was that post offices sold foreign currency. People were accused of (and actually jailed for) fraud because their branch sold $100, there's £70 in the till, and the reconciliation process says that the exchange rate is $100:£80, so there's £10 missing. Horizon had no way to track that the exchange rate at the time of the transaction was $100:£70, they literally shipped a billing system that handles ForEx but doesn't understand exchange rates change over time. And then they lied about it and said the software was working correctly! This isn't an issue with "revolutionary new tech" that we don't fully understand, it's simply a fruit of having an accounting system designed with no actual accountants in the loop. If an accountant had made this exact same mistake, their licence would almost certainly be revoked, but it's somehow ok because computers are involved? > If so, then maybe we can talk about getting bureaucrats involved to make up a bunch of rules and regulations to control everybody We don't need "a bunch" of rules and regulations. We only need one: You're liable for damages resulting from reasonably predictable outcomes, as judged by a panel of your peers. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal