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0 pointsbtilly13y ago0 comments

But there is an insanely huge difference.

When a credentialed engineer puts their signature to the statement that a particular design is sound, the engineer is liable. Not the company. The engineer. If that bridge collapses, the engineer can be sued. And if the company cannot find an engineer who is willing to sign, that bridge cannot be built.

This is very important. Before we instituted this system, the USA had an average of one bridge collapse per week. And it wasn't nearly as large a country as it is today.

As long as I do not have this kind of liability, and likewise lack the power to tell a company that they are not allowed to release a website with the defects that I can identify, I do not consider myself an engineer. I may be forced to accept that my job title says "engineer", but I am firmly of the opinion that I am not one, and anyone who thinks that I am is uninformed on what it means.

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tracker113y ago

Programming CAN be a system of Engineering (and often is wrt medical and weapon systems). Most programming is done as a craft in businesses, with business needs that reward turn around time and coming in under budget more than ruggedness, or real maintainability.

In a more corporate environment, it tends to favor the use of "Architecture" roles, and the use of many different design patterns even when they are not necessary and only add complexity in the name of "consistency" with other "enterprise" implementations.

Just the same, most software development is a model of crafting, not engineering. The exceptions to this tend to be with designing software that works with physical devices for a given role, not generic computing devices that are virtual representations of business logic.

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