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Comment by Sytten | Hacker News Reader

[Off topic] Can someone help me understand why computer scientists call themselves engineers in the US? Is there a reason beside the fact that it is probably not regulated? Here that would be so totally illegal if you are not a member of the order which requires an engineering diploma.

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> Can someone help me understand why computer scientists call themselves engineers in the US?

Someone with a Bachelors (or less) who builds systems by writing code is not a computer scientist. That is a less appropriate title than engineer.

> Here that would be so totally illegal if you are not a member of the order which requires an engineering diploma.

Yes, we know Canada is almost uniquely psychotic about this. I, personally, think it is ridiculous, and I state this as someone who holds an accredited engineering degree (EE) and originally considered pursuing licensure.

That said, I do think software engineering is in dire need of some actual engineering discipline. This industry also is in dire need of title bifurcation; calling everyone "software engineer" regardless of what they actually do, just because they touch code, is ridiculous.

I mostly agree with you, but I still think it makes no sense to not have a regulated title. I mean you can't become a civil engineer if you don't study civil engineering, why is it different for software will remain a mystery to me.

I think the field is too new and fast changing to have fixed standards to examine people on. Civil engineering has been going on for at least 2000 years on the other hand.

Because software development is engineering and not science. It's absurd that my job title can be regulated. I applied for software engineering, I interviewed for it, the company hired me to do software engineering, I'm paid to be a software engineer, the official documents that allow me to legally stay in the US say my job title is "Software Engineer"... Yet I'm not a software engineer because my bachelor's degree says I studied "Computer Science"? That doesn't sound right to me. Scientists make a hypothesis, collect data, test hypothesis, publish their results, something I never do. Engineers face a reallife problem, analyze the system, calculate feasibility, solve the problem feasibly, improve the solution and finally implement the solution, this is what I do.

Do you think it’s absurd that titles like Doctor is regulated? You may not think it’s neccessary to have a professionalized version of Software Engineering but what about code running RTS, critical health care systems etc?

I would argue that regulations are ok when there is a well-developed infrastructure behind the regulation. If we have a lot of evidence that human activity causes global warming, and we have a lot evidence that government regulations X can help global warming, it makes sense to regulate X to solve/alleviate that problem. Or say, we have a lot of evidence that legalize+regulate works very well to solve drug issues (look at Portugal). Do we have any infrastructure in Europe, or US to regulate software engineers? I do not know of one. I studied in UC Berkeley, which is apparently one of the best universities in the world to study CS, and then they gave me a "BA in Computer Science" (the same way you get "BA in Physics" or "BA in Mathematics" ... UC Berkeley L&S only gives one type of diploma), it's kind of awkward to claim that the infrastructure in the US that selects qualified software engineers filtered me out, the same way it filters out some people who wanna be doctors. Btw I do work in a company that handles real time, highly critical insurance data. My employer thinks I'm capable of working in this company; which doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea, as we saw in cases like Equifax, but I cannot think of an alternative. I love my job and I believe I'm qualified to do it, so I'm gonna be pragmatic about this...

"Software engineer" is a common title - I'm UK based, not even US - and that perhaps helps to differentiate practical development work from more academic computer science work: the two activities truly are quite different. "Engineers" is probably just an evolved shortening of that "Software Engineer" title.

I know what you mean though: Chartered Engineer is a proper thing for example, with exams and governing bodies involved, and anyone in construction who just decided to call themselves a Civil Engineer would likely get into some bother for doing so.

Because in the United States the regulated term is Professional Engineer (or PE), ‘engineer’ is entirely unregulated.

Honestly, I have a ("proper") engineering degree and the boundaries between working on hardware design ("proper" electronics engineering) and working on software are pretty blurred. You have a desired outcome, you apply design thought to it and then you have a work plan, you execute (whether by writing software or simulating circuits or documenting or whatever) and then you test it works and make changes.

There's a spectrum of software engineering like there's a spectrum of any engineering. It's called software engineering because it's applying an engineering approach to software.

I’d say what we do is closer to engineering than science. I was fine with programmer and then developer, but fashion in language as well as clothes change, and so here I am an engineer.

It does have some sort of meaning when it comes to pay grades as well. When I worked for local government I had the title "Programmer" and couldn't be called "Developer" without my pay being bumped significantly.

People outside of the software world also seem to take the title "Engineer" a little more seriously than "Programmer" or "Developer" from my observation.

Here's a good summary of the history of the term and discussion on "programmer" vs "engineer".

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/progr...

Great article!

We have software engineering diplomas, and CS majors at large are indistinguishable from them in their output.

We also have certifications. They're not evidence you are a good software engineer.

We are far too well paid to be called scientists.

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