Programmers should stop calling themselves engineers (2015)

And in a slightly oblique way, when I was studying at engineering school (University it is called in Australia) the joke among the students was that at Uni we had two hours to get four questions half right(exams), but once we were engineers we would have as long as it takes to not make a mistake. The lecturers that had actually worked in real industry for any period of time had another line, "Most of what you do as engineers…

Meh, a lot of these kinds of articles seem to be written by civil engineers with a chip on their shoulder and defensive about the use of their title. I don't buy it. Yeah, we don't have certification and all that kind of stuff yet - because it's too new and no-one really has a final, bulletproof idea of "this is how X should always be done". But to me, engineers are people who build important stuff, that a lot…

I think the points they're making are all valid and I share the concerns outlined, but I disagree more than I agree. Bridges have collapsed, buildings have failed, but that happens less than software crashes. Why is that? I think the most important differentiator is the tolerance for such failures. Software is written cheaply, quickly and fails more often because we can afford it to. If we could afford the same thing with buildings, they'd be made quickly and cheaply…

So many words written protesting a natural evolution of language. Engineer started as a word meaning one who is skilled in the design, construction, or use of, surprise, engines. The word evolved in its use to later encompass other systems that can build: civil engineering (bridges and buildings), mechanical engineering (robots and mechanical systems), and computer engineering (actual hardware). Software is merely the latest system. Many universities grant software engineering degrees and apply principles of…