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Why do "programmers" call themselves... "engineers"?!
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SiliconWizard:
This is a very common question that has been asked for several decades now. Is software development engineering? If not, what can we change that would make it similar to engineering?
(I think thousands of people must have asked/worked on this very question.)

Anyway, this is what Dijkstra had to say about it: (excerpt from https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html )


--- Quote ---A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot.".
--- End quote ---
wnorcott:
If a person earns an MIT degree from the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science  department, is that person not  entitled to call himself a 'software engineer'?

By the fine sieve some are using, electrical engineering is barely engineering either.

  Parts machined on lathes? PCB fabrication? That is mechanical engineering.  Only mechanical engineering is a fundamental engineering discipline, which spans millenia. Civil engineering get a nod but is a mere offshoot of ME.   The Apollo program was 95% ME and 5% EE.  As soon as we talk about electronic devices that operate above room temperature, the topic becomes heat transfer, which is also mechanical engineering. Aerospace engineering?   OH, you mean Fluid dynamics.   Designing wind powered electric generators?  Fluid dynamics.  That is mechanical engineering.  Want to bring that widget off the bench and put it in an Abrams tank?  Ruggedized?   Ergo stress analysis, which is mechanical engineering.



cliffyk:
Yup--MIT, my (alma mater: MSME '71) does not seem to have a problem with it:

cliffyk:
RAD (Rapid Application Development); when done properly, which I despite 50+ years in data systems engineering have yet to see¹, is as much "engineering" as anything:



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¹ -- the various attempts i have seen have all gotten to the User Design stage and then gradually (or even rapidly in one instance--an accounting system for a larger State) devolved into "waterfall" projects. It takes far too much discipline (a word engineers know all to well) to stay the RAD course...
magic:
Okay, I will take the bait ::)

microcoded processors - is the microcode hardware or software
Of course software.
how intel can issue bugfixes to its x86 processors that are installed on motherboards in customers premises
Because the CPU runs software, duh. Or by recall, like the FDIV bug.
whether a finite state machine specification (e.g. to control traffic lights) is hardware or software - or both or neither
Some pedants could argue that a spec is neither, unless in some formal executable language, then it's software.
is someone implementing a function in an FPGA a hardware or software engineer
Most likely hardware engineer, because software engineers rarely know how to produce this particular piece of software.
That being said, I have heard work is under way to make FPGA programming more "inclusive" for code monkeys.
is someone implementing a DSP function a hardware or software engineer
I sure hope he's the latter :P
is someone implementing a mechatronic product a hardware or software engineer
No idea what that is, meh.

 :popcorn:
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