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Comment by ku-man | Hacker News Reader

I think we should be careful when using the engineering term.

The author is writing specfically about software engineering but by by-passing the 'software' word in the title he is making a disservice to the real engineers (those professionals who have to go through a rather demanding set of requirements to be considered as such, e.g. mechanical, structural, chemical, etc).

We software developers love to be called engineers because it give us gravitas and status. But we fool ourselves and, most importantly the public, as our field is not regulated and it doesn't have a clear mandate nor ethical rules as the registered engineers.

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I completely disagree, and I have a degree in electronics engineering.

Engineering is simply using knowledge & resources to develop systems or processes that solve human problems. When you're developing software to solve human problems, that is absolutely engineering.

What scientific knowledge exactly goes into writing a list like this? Or for determining our "best" practices? Last I check, none. So no, "software engineering" is not engineering.

EDIT: I think this is ok in such a young field, but we should not deceive ourselves into believing that what we have today is anything like more mature engineering fields. We should also strive to attain their levels by investing more into high quality studies and less "axioms".

Engineering uses knowledge, only some of which is scientific. A good engineer will use the best data where available, and where pragmatic will try to gather more (e.g., by making small prototypes to test a concept). But even today, a lot of engineering is based on "rules of thumb" and past experiences that are not the result of rigorous scientific study.

I agree that software development (engineering) is a young field, and thus there's even MORE we don't know compared to many other more mature fields.

We should certainly strive to increase knowledge via high quality studies. We currently have a serious problem: There is little incentive to do useful high-quality studies. Many people in CS are in a "publish or perish" mode. Publishing ideas is what's important, while scientifically showing whether or not something is true is not required (and takes much longer than posting an untested idea). Just look at paper after paper, and then ask how many show the results of scientifically rigorous experiments. There's remarkably little about the control vs. the experimental group (as an example). There is work that does real science, and I highly praise it - we just need more of it.

Designing, developing and maintaining software systems is most definitely a form of ‘real’ engineering, and should be referred to as such. Qualified software engineers have gained their qualifications in the field through various pathways including tertiary study and professional accreditation, which are rigorous. Not all forms of engineering are regulated, because they don’t need to be.

What many neglect as well is that in many cases, software is regulated. I’ve worked on software where there were real laws about how and what I could produce, how the data must be managed and where, and what degree of quality and testing must be maintained.

I had to write an oath to my province to execute on that faithfully. I was working with private health records. I know lives weren’t at risk, but it took a lot of knowledge and resources to execute on that properly, and maintaining quality and privacy around those systems is genuinely very important.

I don’t call myself an engineer, but I don’t think my job is a joke either.

Not to mention there is plenty of software which does put lives at risk. Aviation, medical, financial etc... And if it's not lives, it's huge amounts of capital.

Words change, and there is no such thing as a “true” or “phony” engineer. The original engineers built siege engines, and were weaponsmongers:

Middle English (denoting a designer and constructor of fortifications and weapons; formerly also as ingineer ): in early use from Old French engigneor, from medieval Latin ingeniator, from ingeniare ‘contrive, devise’, from Latin ingenium (see engine); in later use from French ingénieur or Italian ingegnere, also based on Latin ingenium, with the ending influenced by -eer.

So the evolution of the word engineer to encompass software engineering is its emergent, and I’d imagine by the middle of this century, it’s dominant, form.

As a person with a Engineering degree from High level accredited engineering university working as a software engineer. I disagree. Engineering is using formal methods to bring about a solution. Simply writing code is doing that. No certification is going to change that act. Now if you really want to say someone isnt an engineer for the 4 years they were engineering before their P.E. I think thats offensive to junior engineers.

In Canada, "Engineer" is a protected term...you legally can't use it unless you are a p.Eng. The idea is that Engineers are bound by a series of standards and assume responsibility of their efforts...especially around designs where human health/safety are concerned. And I get that. But, to say that engineering, as a rigorous discipline can only be practiced by engineers, seems wrong to me. Good practices are (or should be) universal and executable by anyone, and not the blessed few.

I had my boiler replaced by a gas engineer a few years ago. I don't think I'd call the work they did engineering, they were plumbers and "handymen". There was nothing in the realm of formal methods, or design. It was a fairly rote job for then (which they did well), but they're still formally called engineers.

Funny, as most programming is plumbing too (e.g. how do I get this value out of the database and into this UI widget; or how can I connect this library to that program).

Some of us make the systems that power spaceships, satellites. Some make critical infrastructure like email or messaging or video chat, payments etc etc etc. Just because there is no official body handing out titles doesn’t make the engineering any less “real”.

It is debatable if software engineers are "real" engineers or not, but in any case, the article is titled incorrectly as the axioms listed do not apply to any engineering discipline.

We could call ourselves software "engineers" if we use the correct practices. I believe everyone should watch the following video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNGaXxMueiw

I work in regulated medical software. Our field is regulated (depending on the application).

I don't care what you call me as long as I'm getting paid.

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