Re:Programmers should stop calling themselves engineers (2015)
by cm2187 on Sunday May 26, 2019 @05:29AM
(#20014001)
I think the article is right for the wrong reason. There is nothing in engineering that relates to public interest particularly. I am sure there are good engineers in the tobacco industry. I hold a formal engineering degree myself, not a single line in the curriculum relates to public good.
But I think the article is right that programmers are cheapening the term “engineer” by their incompetence. Anyone can call oneself a programmer and for a non technical business owner, there is no way to know that their programmers are not going to pepper their systems with rookie mistakes: sql injection vulnerabilities, unvalidated user inputs, unpatched software, default, shared, hardcoded or missing credentials, clear text passwords, etc. None of this is hard or expensive but this is the cause for the quasi totality of data leaks in the past.
How do we create confidence in this profession? It’s not a university degree, I am not sure any CS course even covers this basic stuff, and that does nothing for the stock of existing programmers.
But I think the article is right that programmers are cheapening the term “engineer” by their incompetence. Anyone can call oneself a programmer and for a non technical business owner, there is no way to know that their programmers are not going to pepper their systems with rookie mistakes: sql injection vulnerabilities, unvalidated user inputs, unpatched software, default, shared, hardcoded or missing credentials, clear text passwords, etc. None of this is hard or expensive but this is the cause for the quasi totality of data leaks in the past.
How do we create confidence in this profession? It’s not a university degree, I am not sure any CS course even covers this basic stuff, and that does nothing for the stock of existing programmers.