throwaway676565

> nobody really cares

They will eventually though.

As someone said above, they're not far away enough from the farms yet.

Right, I wouldn't discredit electrical engineers. I can reasonably expect my house not to burn to the ground due to an electrical fire, and my washing machine/fridge will probably fail safe as well. Hardware engineers mostly get a pass in my book, too (when was the last time your CPU hung?).

Meanwhile, Toyota is allowed to ship buggy, untested, unauditable ECUs[0]. How can SE be considered a legitimate engineering discipline when such examples abound?

The "Software engineer" title ought to be reserved for those doing formal verification or at least aiming for high code coverage and otherwise employing proper design and testing methods. Think programmers of NASA shuttle avionics or airplane autopilots.

It's not for your run-of-the-mill startup coder (which includes me).

[0]: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...

Shocking in his case as he was a true programmer (computer scientist).

Today, people say they're "software engineers" with a straight face, which is a disservice to real engineers. I know because I get paid to code.

If bridges were built like software is...

The man is beyond brilliant. Check out his take on computer security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF24WHumvIc

> If the inverse was true then entire fields of Mathematics would have collapsed.

Honest question: what would've been the consequences of this?

> "let's exchange numbers/Facebook and get a coffee sometime." Or I'll see you around.

That's what people say to those they don't want to be around. If they wanted you around they'd call you.