
Programmers, Let’s Earn the Right to Be Called Engineers - ncw96
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/programmers-lets-earn-the-right-to-be-called-engineers/
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geebee
I think it's an ok essay, certainly better than "click bait".

I urge programmers not to call themselves engineers, but it's not really
because I'm worried about a misappropriation of a title. We already have sound
engineers and special effects engineers and financial engineers, and I don't
think anyone is confused about the difference between a structural engineer
and a software engineer, so this controversy seems a little bit contrived.
Also, while reading half a book on PHP and MySql and calling yourself an
"engineer" is a bit of an eye roller, I don't think that calling people who
design large scalable systems that need to provide highly accurate and timely
results in high stakes systems an "engineer" is that bad an appropriation of
the term "engineer". Keep in mind, this term had meaning long before the PE
bodies showed up. According to the wikipedia page, "engineer" is devised from
the latin words for "to contrive, devise" and "cleverness", so in many ways,
you could say a clever bit of programming is closer to the spirit of
"engineering" than conservatively applying tried and true formulas to make
sure a bridge or building doesn't fall down.

I avoid the term "software engineer" because I don't want organizations like
the "National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying" to start
thinking they have a right to regulate who gets to write software. I also
think programmer is a great word. I feel like there's a kind of insecurity in
calling ourselves something other than programmers. Yes, programmers do more
than just write code, we consult, understand business requirements, start
businesses, interact with users, take early adopters through betas, refine,
adapt, prototype, teach, write technical articles. I just don't see why we
need to keep adding a new word.

I don't really mind "Developer" either, but I'd say let's stop the word churn
and instead make our title something to be proud of, rather than trying to
appropriate another word. When people ask me what I do, I just tell them I'm a
programmer.

In spite of all this, I'm not really against some kind of exam, but I really
don't like the idea that it will be locked down to people who have paid
$45,000 a year for three possibly unnecessary years of graduate school, under
pain of imprisonment, like law. It's really awesome that people who studied
math, or physics, or philosophy, or didn't go to college at all can contribute
at the very highest level, and in fact many of the most brilliant
contributions have come from people who didn't study CS. Many brilliant
contributions come from people who did study CS. But we really don't want to
lock down Software "Engineering" this way, and scope creep is a serious
danger. In short, I could see it being a good thing, but I could also see it
going wrong in a very harmful way.

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n7c3c1
Author reads a piece of clickbait.

Author responds to clickbait with even more clickbait (check out that comment
section!).

I wonder if I can write some clickbait off this.

~~~
moggie
You just have.

