

Controversies over the term Engineer - blogimus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_over_the_term_Engineer

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cryptnoob
I passed the EIT exam, worked under professional engineers for four years, and
obtained letters of recommendation from them, all so that I had the right to
sit for the professional engineering exam. I then took that exam and passed
it. I pay $200 per year to maintain my registered professional engineer status
in my state. All this gives me the right to stamp legal documents as an
engineer ... and be held legally accountable for designs that cause injury to
others, either physical or financial. I wear a stainless steel ring on the
little finger of my right hand that was given to me to remind me as I sign off
on designs, that the safety of others is in my hands.

I am allowed to put on my business card, my website, and my consulting
advertisements that I am an engineer. Theoretically, you are not, if you
haven't done these things, and a case could be made that you should not be
able to, just like you don't get to call yourself a doctor or a lawyer.

The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years, which is a
shame. I don't see this trend suddenly reversing, so I don't lose sleep over
it, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel a little regretful over it's
demise.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_The term engineer has undergone serious deflation over the years_

So, do railway engineers (as they are known in the USA and Canada) take the
oath and wear the little ring? Or did that "serious deflation" you refer to
start sometime around the birth of the railroad? ;)

I think the culprit here is not deflation of the language -- the language has
always been ambiguous -- but rather inflation of the scope of engineering
education. It's not just for P.E.s anymore. If you believe the term _engineer_
should be restricted to P.E.s you should start by explaining that to every
academic engineering department I've ever seen, all of which are happy to hand
out "engineering degrees" to graduating "engineering students" who tend to be
called "engineers" for short, whether or not they go on to get a P.E. (which,
as you point out, is a lot more effort and a rather impressive
accomplishment).

I literally _had a Ph.D. in EE_ before I even _heard the term_ "Professional
Engineer". [1] Not because my school was training people to practice without a
license, but because they're training people in skills -- like my old field,
semiconductor laser engineering -- that don't require P.E. certification. Of
every EE Ph.D. I know, I know of exactly _one_ who actually got a P.E.
certification.

And, only slightly off the subject, need I point out that quite a few Ph.Ds
have "Doctor" as part of their name? It's quite common in many countries,
including the USA. I don't do this, because I don't work in academia, and
outside the academy one tends to get confused with an M.D., but according to
this fun article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)>

you are _required_ to use your academic title in certain legal situations in
Austria, and German Ph.D.s tend to use the title all of the time.

\---

[1] Because my undergraduate degree was in physics. I presume that if I'd
studied undergrad EE someone would have mentioned along the way that my B.S.
wouldn't actually qualify me to design a commercially-available table lamp
without adult supervision.

~~~
nitrogen
_[1] Because my undergraduate degree was in physics. I presume that if I'd
studied undergrad EE someone would have mentioned along the way that my B.S.
wouldn't actually qualify me to design a commercially-available table lamp
without adult supervision._

Some schools are probably better, but I left my university after learning from
graduated students that the dream course I was looking forward to, where all
of the requirements would make sense and I would finally be told what I can do
with my newfound knowledge, didn't exist. One friend of mine said that his
BSEE degree entirely drained his confidence to accomplish anything in the real
world. One could argue that a university degree should be purely academic, but
this school's program wasn't too helpful there, either.

To sum up, the only ways I know of to realize that you are or aren't qualified
to do something are to try it until you get rich or get sued, or work with
someone else who already has.

------
jrockway
I use the title "Programmer". I think it's much more accurate than "Software
Engineer", which brings to mind a bunch of guys with slide-rules and pocket
protectors making a UML diagram for some offshore Java developers to
"implement".

Remember that Knuth's book is called "The Art of Computer Programming", not
"The Art of Software Engineering".

~~~
DougWebb
That's because Engineering isn't Art. It's not Craftsmanship either. If you're
really practicing Engineering, then you're using a lot of math and a lot of
well-understood design principles to design whatever it is you're creating
before you create it. You're able to prove, based solely on the design, that
when you get around to actually building it the thing is going to meet all
applicable requirements. The PE signs off on that design as a guarantee that
it's going to be good. And /then/ you build it.

Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a
general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go.
Programming is almost always like this, because it's just too damn hard, time-
consuming, and expensive to document the design in sufficient detail ahead of
time. No requirements documentation is as detailed as the final source code,
when it comes to describing precisely how the software must behave.

That, I think, is why software development will always be Art or Craftsmanship
rather than a true Engineering discipline. If you're designing a bridge, it's
much cheaper and faster to design it on paper than with steel, because paper
drawings and specifications are able to capture all of the details that
matter. If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every
iron atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software,
there is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first
because every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and
the software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without
actually writing the source code, so we skip that level of design. We're
craftsmen instead, designing as we go.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Artists and Craftsmen just forge ahead into creating with little more than a
general idea of what they're making. The design evolves as they go."

Interesting. Any woodworkers here? I've been under the impression that
furniture makers would first work out the design, careful cut the pieces, then
assemble them.

Likewise, many painters will do several sketches, then carefully build up the
final piece when working on canvas.

Of course there are artists who make stuff up as they go, but the suggestion
that artists and craftsmen do not, as a rule, employ careful planning and
detailed steps in the creation of their work is false.

There's an art to engineering, and there's engineering in art.

"If designing a bridge required specifying the exact position of every iron
atom, no one would bother trying to do it on paper first. With software, there
is no advantage to doing more than a high level design on paper first because
every byte in the source code is significant. You get one wrong, and the
software doesn't work. You can't capture that in the design without actually
writing the source code, so we skip that level of design."

    
    
        Blueprints :: High-level source code
    
        Construction of physical bridge ::Compiler/interpreter 
    
    

Discuss. :)

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hrabago
I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer) not to give the term
"Engineer" too much weight, since it was explained to me that the janitors in
my grandfather's office were called "Sanitation Engineers".

~~~
radu_floricica
> I've learned long ago (before I ever touched a computer)

Phrases like this give me a strong sense of history.

~~~
jamesbritt
I nearly knocked my Arduino Lilypad into the trash the other day, and while
straightening up, moved a G1 and two Sansa MP3 players.

It occurred to me that I have a perhaps a dozen computers in my house.

------
julius_geezer
A great-grandfather was listed in the 1900 census as a "stationary engineer";
the next two show him as "machinist", and I'm guessing he had not changed
trades. I doubt his schooling went beyond about 8th grade, for his father was
a farmer in northern Germany.

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mtsmith85
Controversies like this are, I think, just another indicator of the changing
face of careers. Here in NYC web developers are called everything from
"software engineers" to "developers" to "coders" to "presentation layer
engineers." And that doesn't taken into account the front- vs back-end issue.

That being said, I appreciate that many certifications (MCSE, ZCSE) use the
term "certified engineer" as, I do believe that the term engineer should
qualify someone with a more developer skillset.

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JangoSteve
I have two engineering degrees (Mechanical and Electrical), but make my living
from my startup and web-development consultancy. Needless to say I encounter
the misuse of the term engineer quite often and cringe everytime. In fact, one
of my good friends started to refer to himself as an Information Engineer, not
having any formal degree, and when I asked him about it, he said he hadn't
even really given it a thought and changed his title right then and there.

I know people don't do it maliciously, and many even do it tongue-in-cheek
(e.g. "Sanitation Engineer", "Happiness Engineer", and many others I've
encountered). So, like cryptnoob, I don't lose any sleep over it and really
don't take it too personally. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me.
I kind of wish the term "Engineer" were regulated in the US (not just P.E.),
but that's life. And I'm sure someone with a Masters in Engineering would be
bothered that I can describe myself as an Engineer, having only a couple of
B.S.'s.

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Tiktaalik
I like how us "true" engineers in Canada are given an iron ring. It's like we
have our own little secret club :)

~~~
phugoid
Sorry to correct you on that, but the iron ring doesn't make you an engineer
in Canada. At least not in Quebec, where I'm from. They make that quite clear
during the ceremony.

The iron ring has moral implications, while the title of engineer has legal
ones.

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blackguardx
The article is incomplete. You can't use the title "Engineer" in Texas without
a P.E.

~~~
JangoSteve
You should help complete it then... it's Wikipedia :-)

