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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

Sure, we’ve stolen the term “engineer” for long enough, let’s bother the scientists now.

Why is software engineering not a valid engineering? I worked on both software and hardware engineering and general principles seem to be the same. You deal with complexity and simplify it by making abstractions. You make calculations to make sure your project is feasible. It's not like EE and Aerospace engineering are literally the same field but there are some principles shared in those fields, and with software engineering. Am I missing something?

When software engineers stop disclaiming all liability for their products failing, we can talk about them like we talk about engineers (sidenote: some are already take responsibility)

Depends on the country, as some do require a certain level for people to call themselves software engineers to start with.

As for the liability, I fully agree.

It's foolish for anyone to take responsibility for any software written under the current prevailing industry practices.

It would be funny if real engineers were able to get away with making crumbling messes that can't hold their own weight because their middle managers don't believe in concepts like stress and strain like ours don't believe in refactoring or abstractions.

Yes, while in many countries Software Engineering is actually a degree that needs accreditation and in some cases even a professional exam if you need to sign off projects as the responsible person, on US apparently you can call yourself software engineer after a three week bootcamp.

My degree was called computer science, and run by the school of maths rather than the school of engineering, but I’m eligible to apply to be accredited as a chartered engineer (the regulated professional title for engineers in this country), though people who graduated after 2012 aren’t, due to course changes. The whole thing is a bit of a mess.

Just to add to the confusion, my degree was a BA(Mod) rather than a BSc or BEng, for obscure historical reasons.

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