| Title | Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers | |
| Date | Saturday November 07 2015, @11:02AM | |
| Author | cmn32480 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the but-it-makes-me-look-cool dept. | ||
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.
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