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The Atlantic is running an article on the friction between the computing world and Professional Engineer societies. This discussion has been going on for a long time, and is meaningful to me personally - I quit a 10-year career as server administrator with 'engineer' in my job title when I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and have since earned my Professional Engineer license. In a world where most software comes with a disclaimer of liability due to defects, where would an ethical, civic-minded programmer even practice Professional Engineering? Angry Birds probably doesn't have any responsibility to the public safety, so there's little need there; on the other hand, Google's self-driving car program is a good candidate.
I'd love to welcome the programming profession into the circle of licensed Engineers, provided that the industry manages to agree on standards of quality and accountability. I don't see the methods (such as Agile) used by programmers as a significant obstacle, either; the programming motto of "move fast and break things" (which the article wrongly decries) is echoed in the motto "fail early, fail often" that is held by many Mech Eng R&D shops. I just fear that the halting problem will be solved before any such standards become widely accepted and implemented in the industry.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Sunday November 08 2015, @08:44AM
As a software engineer in the industrial sense; my code runs factories and it works reliably for years on end. I work with mechanical; electrial; chemical and process engineers every working day.
The standard of engineering is that an engineer knows his design will work before implementing it.
On the good jobs this is totally true; however on most jobs there is always the engineering triangle at work. GOOD - CHEAP - FAST pick any two. There are so many instances of management asking me to fix mechanical flaws in software (it is possible about 30% of the time) because they have rushed the job and not given the engineers time to actually fully test / model the job. Or the engineer in question is just shit and the design is bad. Plenty of electrical problems occur; which just get fixed and the drawing are changed (assuming there is budget) to match reality.
I am by no means perfect but I have seen some funky shit in my time.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.