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Comment by magic-chicken | Hacker News Reader

As you can see in the article, it already exists in Canada. Some engineering schools like École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) offers a 4 year Software Engineering program that enable you to become a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. It's a self-regulatory body that governs Quebec's professional engineers. There is a ceremony where they give you an iron ring, mostly to remind you to be humble and to always consider the public interest first when making decisions. Can software engineers become P.E. in the U.S ?

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Software Engineers can theoretically become PEs, but it's very recent. Practically speaking, it's difficult right now.

NCEES recently created a PE exam for software engineers in 2013, in collaboration with IEEE and IEEE-CS. However, it's up to state engineering boards whether or not to administer the exam. California does NOT yet the administer the Software Engineering PE exam.

> Can software engineers become P.E. in the U.S ?

Yes. Most CS/CE/SE programs in the USA are part of the school's engineering college and are ABET accredited, which is the governing body of professional engineering in the USA. To become an PE in the USA, one needs to first graduate from an ABET program, take the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, work for at least four years in their field of study, then they make take the PE exam.

Now, almost nobody does this right now. Only 32 people took the Oct 2017 exams in Software, and Computer & Electrical Engineering. For reference, about 4000 people took the various Civil Engineering exams.

There's really no incentive to become a licensed engineer the USA. I've never seen a job posting mention one at all. So I think the exercise would be purely academic (though, I'd love to hear from someone who has a license and uses it).

Many CS programs are accredited by ABET, but they're covered by the Computing Accreditation Commission which doesn't qualify graduates to sit for the FE exam. And many top CS programs, including CMU and Stanford, aren't ABET accredited at all.

Nationwide, there's only 27 Software Engineering programs accredited by ABET. So graduates of those programs could sit for it but until graduates from top programs qualify, no one is going to require it.

> but they're covered by the Computing Accreditation Commission which doesn't qualify graduates to sit for the FE exam.

Wait, are you sure about this? When I was in school, they pushed CS/CE students to take the FE Electrical and Computer exam. I never signed up, but why would the school nag students to do something they weren't allowed to do?

CE students are eligible. CS students are not. If your degree was a combination CS and CE, it might have been accredited by both commissions.

Yes, but there's little point to it. There's a secondary exam, and unless you're going into a field involving safety-critical applications, they don't need P.E.s.

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