Software engineer has always been a daft, grandiose term that seems aimed at prestige rather than reality in the majority of cases.
If coders can call themselves engineers, no reason why anybody else solving puzzles for a living can't.
If coders can call themselves engineers, no reason why anybody else solving puzzles for a living can't.
One day I think there will be true software engineering. When that happens you won't be able to start software projects without certifications, and most people (or programs!) who actually do the coding will be following careful plans and instructions from the engineers who designed the project.
I for one am very happy software isn't fully professionalized yet!
Sounds really bad.
Software can't fall on your head and kill you, not all of it at least.
Different software should require different professionals building it.
And it's usually not about the software but about the management telling the engineers to take shortcuts or whatever (Boeing comes to mind)
I recommend reading the entire postmortem, http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf yes it is quite long but if you write code in any capacity it’s worth the read
I cannot use the word software engineer, since its nothing like real engineering.
Real engineering was def harder, more math intense, and the stakes were sooo much higher. While many software problems can cause you to lose money, engineering problems can cause you to lose time. Yes it sucks your CAD designer had everything on a 0.05 degree angle and it costs 1M to redo the tool, but it also costs 16 weeks to redo the tool. We'd even offer to pay absurd money, prevent future business, etc... to get the tool done in 8 weeks, but its impossible to get it done faster. Now everything in the company is 8 weeks behind schedule.
Anyway, real engineering was harder, but programming pays soooo much more money. Its a demand thing, not a difficulty thing.
I'm guessing you were trying to say something else here. I literally cannot think of a single software engineering problem I've ever encountered that didn't cost time. By your definition, then, software engineering is engineering. Your claim and your definitions are at odds with one-another.
Also, you don't directly claim it, but you seem to imply, that software engineering can't have real-world consequences... or something? As another reply points out, sometimes software is in the critical path for things like rockets and airplanes, where mistakes cost lives.
And some people making software for less life-altering systems take their craft just as seriously. Some people think that losing $10M every single second while their software is failing is a big deal.
Are you claiming people who write HFT code, ad arbitrage code, code that powers the front page of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are just cowboying it through the day, doing nothing special?
Overall I just find this comment very confused. Maybe you could put some thought into what you're trying to say, and say it better?
"The engineering design process, also known as the engineering method, is a common series of steps that engineers use in creating functional products and processes. The process is highly iterative - parts of the process often need to be repeated many times before another can be entered - though the part(s) that get iterated and the number of such cycles in any given project may vary.
It is a decision making process (often iterative) in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation.[1]"
It is not dependent on the problem domain, rather on how the work is performed.
Assembly and safety critical C can be considered software engineering.
Anything with abstraction, no.
But I just mean to say that software engineering itself is definitely still a real thing and there are many people out there that can and should call themselves software engineers.
It's always been a demand thing, not a difficulty thing.
Knot engineer, floor polishing engineer, water spillage cleanup engineer, tax minimization engineer, heart engineer, bus operating engineer, flower pruning engineer