Re:Programmers should not call themselves engineers (2015)
by gyulai on Wednesday August 23, 2023 @02:40AM
(#37232539)
> important stuff, that a lot of people rely on, and for which there will be severe consequences if it is built wrong.
Sure, if you're working on medical devices or in-vehicle electronics or software controllers for nuclear reactors or whatever, that might be the case. But, as a fraction of the software industry, that's tiny. I don't have hard numbers on this, but you can look at popularity of programming languages as a proxy. Most software "engineers" do JavaScript or Python, two languages you would never ever use for such things.
Most software is a form of entertainment with a small amounts of usefulness sprinkled in, or doing things that could, in principle, be done with paperwork.
Sure, if you're working on medical devices or in-vehicle electronics or software controllers for nuclear reactors or whatever, that might be the case. But, as a fraction of the software industry, that's tiny. I don't have hard numbers on this, but you can look at popularity of programming languages as a proxy. Most software "engineers" do JavaScript or Python, two languages you would never ever use for such things.
Most software is a form of entertainment with a small amounts of usefulness sprinkled in, or doing things that could, in principle, be done with paperwork.