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How much is this misnaming the fault of companies, how much is this the fault of schools, and how much of this is the fault of society in general? From my reco
by sbov 12y ago
How much is this misnaming the fault of companies, how much is this the fault of schools, and how much of this is the fault of society in general?
From my recollection, Software Engineering became A Thing at schools long before companies started calling their employees Software Engineers.
My general thinking is that engineering is a more practical application of science. Colleges don't have a Department of Development. They have a Department of Engineering. So even though it doesn't quite fit, maybe we can just stick the degree in the engineering department and obviously call it Software Engineering.
So schools do this - they create this "engineering" discipline that doesn't quite fit engineering. It seems obvious that companies and people are going to then follow.
- jghn 12y agoCurious when your recollection starts. I remember when I was looking at schools (~1990) many schools didn't even have a separate computer science degree, much less software engineering. Often it was a sub-degree in the math department. OTOH I'm pretty sure 'software engineer' as a title was already well under way by then.
- sbov 12y agoAround 2003, when I graduated. For what its worth, our computer science department was a part of the math department when I first went there, but got moved to the science department halfway through. Maybe it was just the jobs I was looking at. They all had "programmer" or "developer" in the title. But it was around when programmer started becoming bad, and over the next 4 or so years they all started morphing into "engineer".
- bdcravens 12y agoWhen I started undergrad in 1996 CS was pretty common.