Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers

140 pointsby _kcn8over 9 years ago

23 comments

Camilloover 9 years ago

What about train engineers? Sound engineers? Sanitation engineers? That ship sailed so long ago, it did so on steam power. I'm not even going to read your article. Clickbait: denied.Besides, yes, of course, the civil engineer, what if bridges fall, certifications, professional order, etc. What about the electrical engineer making a portable radio, or a cable? We were just talking about how those can be just as bad as software (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494</a>).In contrast, the doctor has certifications, a professional order, etc. So does the lawyer. Are those engineers? No. Turns out those things have nothing to do with the concept of engineering itself, but rather with the kind of legal framework that is appropriate in some businesses that carry a high risk of personal damage to others, and/or with the desire and ability of certain groups to control access to a profession. All of which are tradeoffs, which means there needs not be a single set-point that is ideal across all fields of engineering. As any engineer could have told you.

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allworknoplayover 9 years ago

This is absurd. First, structural engineering in the developed world is insanely expensive because everything is overbuilt by at least 100% and teams of expensive senior people are hired to check every single number many times over the course of many months.Software engineering, in contrast, is rushed out the door by typically over-worked, junior, and small teams. Blame the management, not the engineers.But more importantly, this is totally beside the point, because the two problems aren't even the same: most software has to change constantly; structures mostly stay the same. The hard part about software engineering is designing for flexibility -- it's ridiculously easy to build software that never changes.Oh, and by the way, it is extremely common to have significant structural flaws in major construction projects; they simply find ways to go in and fix them before the building collapses, but not always before leaks occur, mold grows, etc.

dapover 9 years ago

This is absurd for many reasons pointed out in this thread.The broad brush is especially problematic. If "programmers" should stop calling themselves "engineers" because of the prevalence of poor quality software, couldn't one argue (equally speciously) that "writers" should stop calling themselves "journalists" because of the prevalence of things like listicles and clickbait? In journalism as well as software, the garbage seems to far outweigh the good stuff (by volume). And in both fields, some professionals are trained, but many are self-taught, and neither skills nor ethics are uniformly incorporated into all practitioners' work.I believe there _is_ a legitimate issue around the quality of software. But I don't see how demoting the class of people who build software brings us any closer to improving that situation. Rather, I'd be interested to read a thoughtful article about _why_ low-quality software remains prevalent. (I have a feeling it's because bad software remains economically viable -- in turn because it's still actually useful to people. A bridge that falls down is useless. An app that crashes every day is very frustrating, but potentially still worth the price. I'm just guessing, of course, but that's why I'd love to see a well-researched article that seeks to understand the problem before prescribing a solution.)

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banku_broughamover 9 years ago

I darted my work life as a civil engineer, mostly designing structural steel buildings. Now many years later I'm a data engineer at a big tech firm. My opinion: programming work is engineering.I think the author simply has no idea what either field entails, and has proved me now to denigrate the worth of an English major's career.Seriously though, there are so many kinds of engineering: Structural engineer Geotechnical engineer Chemical engineer Biomedical engineer Genetic engineer Mechanical engineerJust to name a handful. Software engineer clearly fits.

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stonogoover 9 years ago

It's all well and good for Hacker News entrepreneurs to blather about egalitarianism, but the primary difference between an 'engineer' (a person with a Professional Engineering certification) and an 'engineer' (a person who touches a computer for money) is that one group is held responsible for their work, including explicit ethics standards, a governing body with certification-revocation powers, and a legal framework for enforcement of quality.There has never, ever, ever, been a programmer who has been barred from programming for selling shitty code. There have absolutely been engineers barred from engineering for selling shitty designs.The only way to make this (frankly uninteresting) argument end is to either hold programmers accountable for quality, or stop holding engineers accountable for quality. Until then, you're using one word to refer to two groups of people with wildly different work requirements, and there will always be people complaining about that.Full disclosure: I have done both kinds of engineering for a living.

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jdnierover 9 years ago

A great example of what computer "Engineering" can look like is the On-Board Shuttle Group (Lockheed/NASA).<a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff" rel="nofollow">http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff</a> [1996]"This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved.""The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering."

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muzmathover 9 years ago

This is one of those flame wars that never seems to die down. Really though... who cares? A lot of certified engineers do nothing more than simple paper pushing, should we start flooding medium with articles about that as well?> The title “engineer” is cheapened by the tech industry.A lot of 'cheap' techies are making way more money than officiated engineers

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pkayeover 9 years ago

I would say this is the best definition of an engineer... "An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems. -- Wikipedia" What really matters is the applied scientific knowledge and ingenuity to benefit mankind. The liability aspect shouldn't be the key differentiator.

lsiunsuexover 9 years ago

"Doing so undermines a long tradition of designing and building infrastructure in the public interest."(from google) Infrastructure : the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.In some countries, Facebook is viewed as "the internet" and the rest of us consider it to be just another social network (albeit one of the biggest) - and for all accounts, the internet is just as important if not more important then some utilities - a company can survive without water (technically) - some companies now a days can't survive without an internet connection - their 100% internet based.Therefore - I'm an engineer - I build buildings (websites) that allow people to do things - be it educational or informational or to sell stuff.... i completely understand the argument being made but it can be made across the board - Is a parent that home schools their kids a teacher? Is an employee at McDonalds a chef? Is a PHD a doctor? All titles have different meanings when used in different context.</getoffmylawn>

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pandamanover 9 years ago

Audio engineers should too? The author of the article seems to be willfully ignorant of the fact that some words have more than one meaning.

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minsightover 9 years ago

Where I come from (Canada), you can't call yourself an Engineer unless you are certified as a Professional Engineer by the appropriate licensing body. This is similar to the fact that you can't call yourself a Lawyer or a Medical Doctor unless you have the appropriate certification. It's not a matter of fussiness. It's just that there are certain niches for professional behavior and those niches have evolved a process to prevent those without appropriate qualifications from marketing themselves using those names. There are also, broadly speaking, liability ramifications for the people in all of those occupations.

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devonkimover 9 years ago

We have certifications in different parts of tech that are not exactly the best indicators of knowledge / skill either (see: MCSE, RHCE, CCNA, CCIE, Java certifications...) so one of the distinguishing factors I see is not a level of formalization / standards but the adherence to standards as consumers of an industry's output. For example, there's not a lot of start-ups making skyscrapers, so the market for those selling the construction becomes large entities like governments and corporations, and the standards become ones that they care about. This is similar to how software is sold to the government, which is completely different than how it is for consumer software. But few people buying Wordpress are willing to buy some mythical Enterprise Edition that's $100k / mo with an operations team at your service basically, so the cost of paperwork pushing involved for the bureaucracy-driven customers is removed at the cost of perhaps some corners cut.However, I see quality output as a false dichotomy (rather, negative correlation) with bureaucracy / regulation of an industry's workers - look at the horrendous crap being produced for the Pentagon. Forget the glitzy articles in Wired and Techcrunch for defense-tech companies - most tech for government is done by under-qualified folks trying to make a quick buck off of Uncle Sam that couldn't really make it in the commercial software world. They'd be hard-pressed to make anything even close to some Chinese knock-off of a tech product if it came down to the wire. But I suppose this is because most defense contracts are regulated based around political and social requirements (see: the advantages for being a disadvantaged minority in getting a defense contract, plus Veteran's preferences) rather than actual functional requirements. Maybe the medical software industry is a better example of regulations in the right place (not that it's well done).

mywittynameover 9 years ago

This is a silly argument, but I feel compelled to participate.The distinction is pretty difficult to make. Where does electrical engineering cross into computer engineering, then into software development? If your program runs on a FPGA, is that engineering or software development? If you program mathematical models for controlling boosters for satellites, engineering or software?Is the distinction the person writing the software? A ChemE writes a program to control the dispensing of certain chemicals to maintain a reaction is engineering, but if a guy without a degree does the same, it's not?Like it or not, software is a major component to engineering. We have progressed to the point where lots of products cannot be made without some level of computing.The argument that "simple" software is somehow not engineering is also bunk. Mech.Es design mundane shit all the time. Somebody makes money designing door handles and light switches. Just like people make money building apps.

merbover 9 years ago

I wouldn't call myself an engineer, however I know some Developers who _ARE_ Bachelor of Engineering or even Masters. In Germany SOME Information Technology courses will get you this title instead of the Bachelor of Science.However thats just a title an official title and I don't care so much about that, since that says nothing about how much you could do. since mostly the newer generation with these titles knowing less and less. Btw. I also don't like people who care too much about it, they are mostly the 'bad' ones out there. if somebody would call me an engineer, fine. however I would never call myself so.

EricFredover 9 years ago

Ok, so i just read this incendiary article titled Programmers: stop calling yourselves engineers. First, it was terribly written and researched and i can only imagine the author had very little respect for his fellow man. Second, Let me clarify that the word engineer is more a verb than a noun. It describes an action, not a person. We engineer a solution to a problem. We are all engineers in our own right. We solve problems that are important to us. This is the one downside to the freedom of expression the internet provides.

tiredwiredover 9 years ago

I self-identify as an engineer. I have not had the operation yet but, you should not discriminate against me.

jld89over 9 years ago

I refuse to oblige this clickbait. The headline is so blatantly (click me! please! I need attention!)Seriously though, Software Engineers will maintain the status of engineers whether they like it or not. And that's because it is real engineering work. Licensed or not that doesn't matter one bit.

mesozoicover 9 years ago

In this article someone who can't handle the fact that there are multiple types of engineers.

inoover 9 years ago

Also stop calling yourselves architects. Job searching has become even harder.

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mring33621over 9 years ago

Tell that to our employers. As for myself, I'm fine with 'programmer' or 'software developer', but my employer(s) often like to spice the titles up a bit.

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FavoriteFishover 9 years ago

Think Bogost fairly captured the trade. So, raises the question what do we call folks that earn a living working on something until some else says its good enough?

brwrover 9 years ago

The following is from my personal perspective as a lead front-end engineer.The author mentioned multiple times that civil engineers build bridges. Cool. Bridges are static. Updating a bridge is logistically difficult. You need expensive, heavy machinery. You have to redirect traffic. There are huge safety concerns for anyone standing below the bridge. Some of these things ring true for software engineering too. Voyager I has travelled almost 20,000,000,000 (thats 20 billion) km since it left earth[1]. Hong Kong's subway system transports over 5,000,000 (5 million) people every day and boasts a 99% on-time rating [2]. Google's autonomous cars have driven themselves over 1,250,000 miles since 2009 [3]. What do Voyager, Hong Kong's subway, and Google's cars have in common? They are all powered by software.I don't dispute that quality is one of the first things to go at most startups, but to say that software engineers aren't "real" engineers because we have different goals and constraints is absurd. PEs (professional engineers) are generally concerned with quality, safety, and efficiency above all. This makes sense because trains, planes, and automobiles can't easily be fixed if something goes wrong. Remember the Toyota fiasco in 2009/2010 when the cars' gas pedals were getting stuck? The driver couldn't stop the car and this resulted in at least 10 deaths and a settlement of $1.1bn [4]. That settlement doesn't include the ~$3bn that Toyota spent in recalls, probes, and redesigning the gas pedal[4]. These are not issues that most startups face. We optimize for fast feedback loops that give us reliable data which we can use to improve the experience of using our product. In many cases, quality is sacrificed in favor of speed-of-development. Is it perfect? No. Is this engineering in the traditional sense? No. Does that mean we aren't engineers? I don't think so.Building a rocket is difficult from a technical perspective. However, I believe that, in some ways, building a web application is even more difficult. Rockets are not concerned with human behavior. The few humans who will be interacting with the rocket are highly technical and have been through months or years of preparation. That's not the case in the work that I do. On the web, you must account for the knowledge and experiences of every individual using your product. The goal is to come up with solutions that anyone can intuitively understand without explanation, regardless of whether they've been using computers their entire life or if this is their first time. This is inherently a ridiculously difficult problem to solve because of human nature. Accomplishing this goal requires building complex systems that can handle interaction from thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of individual people, each with their own unique perspective on life and technology. Moreover, there are a number of highly complicated back end systems for things such as automatically scaling infrastructure to meet demand, pipelines for collecting and analyzing logs and data, and storing and retrieving data in an efficient way (in some cases, sub-millisecond analysis over billions of rows).My point is that this article seems to have been written by an elitist person who does not understand the work of the people they are condescending to. I agree that, in general, software should be of higher quality, but compared to mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering, software is still very young. We are learning the ways of traditional engineering, forging a new path towards reducing time-to-market for new products, and inventing and building for a relatively new platform (the web) at the same time. There will be bumps in the road. That does not take away from the fact that software engineers solve difficult technical problems, which I believe is the essence of engineering.[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1</a>[2]: <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/travel/hong-kong-mtr-success-story/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/travel/hong-kong-mtr-success-s...</a>[3]: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/02/google-self-driving-car-update-from-october-no-accidents-halloween-helpful/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/02/google-self-driving-car-upd...</a>[4]: <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324669104578203440990704994" rel="nofollow">http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246691045782034...</a>

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strictneinover 9 years ago

If I understand the gist of it, we can't call ourselves engineers because true "engineers" are blessed from on high by some self-ordained group, and given special rings while reciting a poem during a ritual? (yes, that's apparently a thing).His problem is that his definition of engineering is ancient, not that many of those writing software aren't engineers.