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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Which is why in some countries Software Engineering is a protected title, with a specific set of skills to assess, and we don't go around calling ourselves "engineers" after a six week bootcamp.

https://www.informatics-europe.org

https://www.ordemengenheiros.pt/pt/a-ordem/colegios-e-especi...

We might still call ourselves engineers without the admission exam (which is a legal gray zone if signing projects), yet the university degree was anyway certified by the organization and the only thing missing is the exam.

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As an "engineer" with the corresponding university degree, I am absolutely against software engineering being a protected title, for several reasons:

- We are nowhere close to a set of widely agreed required, specific practices for a software engineering project. "Signing a project" is meaningless without those specific practices.

- Even if we had those practices, this world changes so fast that they would need to be updated frequently and get people to examine themselves again.

- There's no test for the characteristics underlying components being used. If I'm building a bridge, I can specify certain characteristics for the materials and the procedures, those things can be tested during/after construction and if something fails, we can try and check what failed and pinpoint responsibility (was it a bad procedure, a bad implementation or a bad material?). That's utterly impossible with software. A program crashes or has a bug, and whose fault is it? Nobody will be signing any project and assuming the responsibility it comes with when there's no reliable way to pinpoint who's responsible for a failure.

- There isn't even a specific set of skills for an engineer that we all agree on. Yes, you might say "know programming languages" or "testing" or "project management", but what does actually mean? Do you need to know Agile to be a software engineer? Or assembly? Or A/B testing?

And finally and the most important thing for me: the amount of knowledge you get from a degree is just a small, often antiquated, part of what's actually software engineering in practice. As someone with an actual software engineering degree, I do not think that the degree is necessary for someone to be a great software engineer. Most of the important knowledge will be learned on the job and on various Internet resources anyways.

In my opinion, making SWE a protected title will, at best, do nothing. At worst it will put good engineers without a title out of a job, for no actual change in the quality of the software.

High integrity computing has proven record of what those practices should be.

As for the rest of your arguments, let me rephrase it,

And finally and the most important thing for me: the amount of knowledge you get from a degree is just a small, often antiquated, part of what's actually medicine in practice. As someone with an actual medicine degree, I do not think that the degree is necessary for someone to be a great doctor. Most of the important knowledge will be learned on internships and on various yearly conferences anyways.

In my opinion, making a doctor a protected title will, at best, do nothing. At worst it will put good doctors without a title out of a job, for no actual change in the quality of the treatments being applied.

> High integrity computing has proven record of what those practices should be.

And high integrity computing is applied only on certain projects with limited scope because outside of that it's not viable. I'd like to see high integrity computing applied to a web app.

> As for the rest of your arguments, let me rephrase it,

You might rephrase it as much as you want, it does not make it an apt comparison nor an actual argument. Funnily enough, my SO is a doctor so I see how different our education and work is.

The set of base knowledge they get in the degree is not small nor antiquated: there's nobody releasing a new human body every other year, but in SWE we have new operating systems and new execution environments constantly. The set of tools doctors use is fairly constant and consistent between hospitals, in SWE two companies might have entirely different processes, tools and code, and still be functional.

And while yes, doctors need to learn new things constantly and there's quite a lot to learn on internships (which, by the way, are different from SWE internships, as internships in medicine is where doctors get their specialization education), from what I've seen I guarantee you there's practically no way one could be a good doctor without having most of the knowledge they learn in the degree and the specialization years.

High integrity computing is still not widespread enough, because unfortunely lawsuits and liability procedures aren't yet common, but they eventually will.

We only need a few more media star exploits landing across social media for goverments to finally act upon it.

That web app would have a process just like anything else.

It would be more expensive?

Certainly, yet the food joint down the corner also needs to oblige to safety regulations if it doesn't want to be closed down by health inspection, and yet they manage.

Hospitals have workflow and treatment guidelines for a reason, they aren't the same process in every single one, not even on the same region on the same country.

It is clear which side of the line each one of us is, so not worthile to discuss this any further.

> unfortunely lawsuits and liability procedures

Why would you want law suits against software developers to be more common?

It is the only way to make business take action to adopt quality software development pratices across the stack.

Without health inspection, those steaks aren't probably something you would feel like eating, if allowed to look into the kitchen.

When it is cheaper to ignore quality, business will do so.

Most business software isn't safety critical in any way. If you're arguing that we need a framework around things like "self driving" cars, then sure. There are already processes for software in medical devices.

I'm personally eating a steak from a restaurant that isn't inspected, the risk is low and any restaurant I'd go to for a steak relies on repeat customers. The incentives are aligned. Inspecting ground beef at the source makes sense, but that's a different matter.

Sometimes cheap has a quality all its own, to paraphrase and repurpose Napoleon.

I guess authorities need to be notified of its location and close it down, since is operating illegally.

That is my point of view, and applies to how I would like to see software development for anything, including ToDo apps.

So you see, we aren't going to agree.

I fundamentally don't understand this kind of authoritarianism.

What possible good could ever come from involving the force of the state in something a trivial and banal as a todo list app?

For the same reason in any other kind of industry, when things don't work they get refunded, and when things go wrong people get sued.

Software shouldn't be a special snowflake in that regard, and because it currently is, that is what allows business to disregad quality and good software development practices.

Even 1 euro shops and street food joints have a minimal set of quality standards they must adhere to, or get closed down when not.

The US doesn't have "engineer" as a protected title (*) and I think that's a good thing. We shouldn't gatekeep behind expensive and time consuming doors.

(*) except for PEs, which except for a handful of industries no one really cares about

What are those specific skills? The links you gave don't seem to say anything about that

5 years learning about various programming languages, OS architecture, distributed systems, graphics programming, algorithms and data structures, soft skills like project management and risk assessment, physics, math, electronic and digital circuits, among others.

Start with https://guia.unl.pt/en/2022/fct/program/1053#structure and follow up with https://guia.unl.pt/en/2022/fct/program/1059#structure.

Before the Bologna changes across EU, those two were a single degree.

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