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Are Programmers Engineers?
The Llama King writes "The Houston Chronicle has an interesting story about a debate in the Texas Legislature over whether programmers are really engineers. A quote: " 'It's one of the silliest issues we're having to deal with this session, but it's also one of the most important,' said Steven Kester, legislative director of the American Electronics Association, an organization of computer companies." Are you really an engineer? Or just a code-monkey?"
Programmers work at a tactical level. They are supplied specifications and produce a product to meet them. They are skilled labor, akin to tailors and masons.
Engineers engineer. They understand the problem better than the customer, and are consequently relied on to help form the basic goals of the project itself. Engineers, working at a strategic level, could also excel in business or government if technology didn't have the best toys.
There was a similar problem here in Ontario (Canada) to use the term "Engineer" you have to be lisenced. It is illegal to try and pass your self off as one if you are not lisenced. M$ had to drop the term engineer from their certification process. Check out Professional Engineers Ontario under Software Engineer for more details.
It all boils down to liability. If I certify a water treatment process safe and its not. Than I am in DEEP trouble. No more lisence, fines and basically the carrear is down the tube. In Canada and I think most of the commonwealth this is true.
Now I know a bunch of computer engineers, most of those guys are hardware, not software, but these guys wouldn't want to be engineers under Canadian law if they were doing programming. The computer software industry is still too immature to fall under these types of guidelines. Too many programs are not stable yet are shipped out because marketing wants them to.
I think I all boils down to currently the public is willing to let flawed software exist. And until someone dies nothing will change.
Like water in Ontario. People have to die before there is a backlash and things are fixed.
On the other hand, licensed Professional Engineers undergo rigorous training in order to obtain that status. I'm not sure exactly how it works in Texas, but in North Carolina (where I'm in school), becoming a professional engineer takes 3 steps. 1) You have to pass an extremely long and difficult test in various areas of engineering such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and solid-state physics. 2) You have to work a set number of hours under an already licensed PE who signs off on your work. 3) After completing those required hours, you have to pass yet another exam that tests your engineering know-how. I'm sure if anyone ever tried to implement such a system for liability for software engineers, it would require having those coders undergo similar training. I'm not saying that this would make the software engineers any less likely to make mistakes, but it does mean that: (a) those who are professionally certified know the risks and have been trained in avoiding mistakes and (b) only those who are willing to be held liable would become PE's. You are allowed to do less critical engineering work without obtaining your PE license. I'm sure the same would true for software developers.
I think he confused computer engineer with software engineer. Computer Engineers are pretty much just EE's with an emphasis on VLSI design and system level software.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
- An engineering degree that meets some basic requirements
- 4-8 years of experience, depending on your degree
- Detailed log of what you've done for these last 4-8 years
- Experience under another licensed engineer
- Five references, three of which must be other licensed engineers
- Two exams
There is a serious problem here, notably that there are few licensed electrical engineers and no licensed software engineers. Since you need a licensed engineer to create a licensed engineer, few if any qualified people will ever be able to license themselves.There are exceptions for people who have been in the field for something like 12 years, but you are still required to have a detailed log of everything you've ever done. Simply put, most people never get this far.
Personally, I would love to have my license to go along with my EE degree, but it's just not realistic to waste my time. I don't even know any licensed EEs, much less have a company willing to hire me and place me under another licensed EE to gain the required experience.
My suggestion for the state is this. The word "engineer" has become watered down in the past several years. As it stands today, licensed engineers are allowed to place "PE" after their name, as well as calling themselves "engineers." Thus, the state should probably allow "engineer" to be used in whatever context people want and only let licensed engineers use the "PE" designation.
Licensing is important and has its place in quite a few fields, so I also recommend that the state evaluate ways to open the door for more people to be licensed in the high-tech fields. Perhaps the restrictions should temporarily be made more lenient to "seed" the field with licensed engineers, thus allowing for easier licensing of new engineers in the future. Finally, I recommend that the legislature let the engineers figure this out, rather than figuring it out for them.
Katherine Harris was both George W's presidentail campaign co-chair and Florida secretary of state in charge of elections ie who was allowed to be on the roll and vote counting. No conflict of interest here?
Every single decision she made followed the law and held up under international scrutiny.
Katherine had anyone "suspected" of commiting a felon removed from the rolls
I assume you got this from the BBC's Greg Palast since he is really the only person that thinks this is a story. A quick look at his webpage will show you how partial he is (he seems to have staked his entire career on undermining the Bush presidency).
Now for the real facts:
In 1998, Florida Division of Elections Director Ethel Baxter, a democrat, hired the firm Database Technologies to compile this list. The list had around 100,000 names on it.
One of these "supposed felons" was Linda Howell, elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida. The only way to get back on the roll was to agree to fingerprinting. Ie guilty until "proven" innocent.
Once again, nobody was required to use the list (several counties including Madison County didn't use it at all), but if they did use the list, they were required to independently verify the names before any action was taken. The fingerprinting was only required to dispute the removal if the person actually was "verified" by the county supervisor and removed from the voter registration- otherwise they probably never knew they were on the list. With all of his complaining, Mr Palast has only found about a half a dozen people that were incorrectly removed from voter registrations and forced to dispute the removal.
So it boils down to this:
There is only anecdotal evidence that any legitimate voter was actually prevented from voting because of this list. Rep Corrine Brown, a democrat, claimed that she saw "2 or 3" black people get incorrectly turned away, but when the media pressed her, she was unable to give any details.
So were minority voters specifically targeted? The NAACP, who came in to represent these minorities, stated VERY plainly in this settlement that
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush