> I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic, both to we people in the field and people looking to employ people in the field.

My university has an alternative entrepreneurial focused “senior design” course open to engineers and cs students. Because of scale the CS students are now separated in a different section. All I can say is the level of toxicity that I’ve witnessed from cs students to engineering students has made this a much nicer course to work with teams.

Engineering students can be ego driven now it alls sure, but the level of toxicity behavior and assumptions of superiority I’ve seen from CS students makes me glad I don’t have to deal with them anymore.

The primary fault I see, and it’s buried in the abstractions comments from others is the assumption that their knowledge is all encompassing because it is so abstracted. The inability to attach it to contextual realities is taken as virtue rather than a risk factor.

I always go back to the fast company article on the coding team behind the space shuttle and their culture. The difference is telling in terms of qyality and risk tradeoff. Realistically the number of engineers who will design something that could kill someone and software developers who will exist at opposite ends of the percentage scale. That reality manifests in professional culture. We’ve seen it in so many places.

This threat is insightful but not in the way commenters likely think.