Re:Programmers should stop calling themselves engineers (2015)
by acqq on Sunday May 26, 2019 @05:12AM
(#20013938)
Actually there are different things for which people study:
a) computer science
b) computer engineering
c) business and management
One who is an engineer (b) by training can spend most of his life implementing the wishes of the (c) people, basing his work on some results obtained by the (a) people, and the product can still be against the "public interest" as in the implementation of the MCAS for Boeing 737 MAX (where it can be said that the software was actually produced "according to the specifications" but that the "specifications" were faulty). But that doesn't mean he isn't an engineer, only that he works in an
environment that is driven by the goals which aren't of "public interest."
There are even more extreme "non-public interest" stories to be told, but that just means that on many levels there should be more done to move the society to do what the "public interests" are. Which as we know is not easy at all, and surely not decided by the practitioners of of some engineering discipline themselves.
a) computer science
b) computer engineering
c) business and management
One who is an engineer (b) by training can spend most of his life implementing the wishes of the (c) people, basing his work on some results obtained by the (a) people, and the product can still be against the "public interest" as in the implementation of the MCAS for Boeing 737 MAX (where it can be said that the software was actually produced "according to the specifications" but that the "specifications" were faulty). But that doesn't mean he isn't an engineer, only that he works in an environment that is driven by the goals which aren't of "public interest."
There are even more extreme "non-public interest" stories to be told, but that just means that on many levels there should be more done to move the society to do what the "public interests" are. Which as we know is not easy at all, and surely not decided by the practitioners of of some engineering discipline themselves.
(and moderators, please add 2015 in the title).