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There's the old quote attributed to Djikstra: Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. But who cares about titles, real
by jmduke 14y ago
There's the old quote attributed to Djikstra:
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
But who cares about titles, really? Why do they matter?
The article makes the claim that you can tell someone's not a scientist if they have 'scientist' in their title. I'd argue for a corollary: you can tell someone probably doesn't deserve their title if they spend any significant amount of time worrying about it.
- Fuzzwah 14y agoAs someone who has just moved to the US and been through the "joy" of looking for work; me. I'm a server admin, I have come to realize that what I do can be titled many different things. System admin / engineer, network admin / engineer, server admin / engineer, windows / linux admin / engineer..... and more. I dearly wish there was just one title for my job.
- rhizome 14y agoSystems Engineer, note the plural on "systems." Don't shy away from this, it's a title that has existed for decades and you're in good company. Resist title inflation!
- tgflynn 14y agoBut in many industries, defense and aerospace in particular, systems engineers are people who integrate multiple technologies to build systems (such as an aircraft or missile). They don't manage computer systems.
- vonmoltke 14y agoThis confusion has been a major annoyance to me, since I spent several years as a classical systems engineer. To make matters worse, I actually wrote code in those roles (C, Fortran, and Matlab) and was at one point a real-time embedded software engineer in all but title.
- rhizome 14y agoAre we talking about those industries? It's a valid title for many sectors, and is perfectly cromulent for OS/Neteng roles.
- clebio 14y agowell, when you're searching tech job boards, it sure matters. As (another) Systems Engineer (in the sense of Von Bertalanffy not Von Neumann), searching for relevant jobs is a _huge_ annoyance. I've given up on titles, and search for, or look at, job descriptions, filtering mentally the various keywords that are positive and negative indicators for what I do (feedback controls, operations research, etc.).
- rhizome 14y agoThat goes for all of my job hunts too, but it doesn't mean I'm not whatever a simplified title of my skills implies.
- tgflynn 14y agoI don't know why not, especially since they also employ many software engineers and IT people.
- davidcuddeback 14y agoThe article's point has little to do with titles. It's about the scientific method and the lack of its existence in programming circles. The bit about titles is called an introduction.
- fogus 14y ago> But who cares about titles, really? Why do they matter? I'm pretty sure that was the point. The term physicist doesn't make a physicist a physicist.
- derleth 14y ago> Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. I prefer: Computer science is no more about computers than thermodynamics is about engines.