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Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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