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Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Old, but fun read that argues that today's programmers are not like typical Engineers and shouldn't really call themselves that as Engineering requires certification, is subject to government regulation, bear a burden to the public, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I don't think gate keeping engineering is bullshit, software or otherwise. In fact I think it is one of the few eminently important things to gatekeep.

If computer systems have peoples lives depending on them, having accredited engineers that may be part of a chain of liability for their mistakes is a potentially life saving measure. It provides increased guarantee that someone will be held responsible, be it the firm, or in the case of bankruptcy, the individual engineer.

This provides a significant incentive to only sign off on work that meets all relevant safety criteria.

I'm not sure if that's how it works in software engineering, but it certainly should.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are separate titles for accredited engineers in the US and UK. If anyone cared enough they'd already be using them. The fact is, vanishingly few software engineers work on high risk (to human life) projects. Versus, for example, structural engineers doing it daily.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

We're kinda close because we make a tool that people in a dangerous line of work use to plan their dangerous work. That said, there are checks at each step (output from our software is checked by other software, which loads it onto hardware with its own checks, and then get double check everything before pushing "go").