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The Life of a Software Engineer
Jonathan Wise writes to share with us an interesting bit of prose describing life as a software engineer. "I am, in the States, known as a Software Engineer. In Canada we're not allowed to call ourselves engineers, although the discipline is no less rigorous than any other kind of engineering. But perhaps its for the best, because 'engineering' describes only a part of what I do. A software developer must be part writer and poet, part salesperson and public speaker, part artist and designer, and always equal parts logic and empathy."
Life? We don't have a life!
It's a troll, and definitely NSFW.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
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Oh? Your wall has fallen down? That just seems to happens sometimes. Well, just push it up, go outside your house and come back in. Hopefully it won't happen again.
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I'm obviously going to be modded down for this, but what does this blog post do on the front page of Slashdot? I mean ti's not news, it's just a guy with a job like another telling us his life. Surely that may be relevant to some, but that's just a blog entry about someone's life among others, so what the hell is it doing here? Is that guy pals with ScuttleMonkey?
You just got troll'd!
Using a bridge-building analogy, in my opinion the software development phase is akin to designing the bridge. You've got to present what you want it to look like and how you want it to function in a visually appealing way but the exact details aren't your concern, that's up to the engineer to figure out. In the software world, the computer plays the role of the engineer. It's up to the computer to figure out how to implement what you've described. Therefore, Canada has it right. Software development isn't engineering at all.
"I want to be an engineer, sex can wait !" -- and this sums up the life of an engineer...
I've ran across EEs, MEs, CEs, you get the idea, here in the US that insisted that software coders, Computer scientists, or LAN engineers were not engineers. Basically, they said that their profession was based on physical laws - engineering is applied physical science - whereas CS is based on man made rules just like grammar and writing. And you don't see writers being called "language engineers". Snobbery? Maybe, but I kind of sympathize with them because looking at all of the different computer languages, computational methods, etc... I can see their point.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Who tagged this Pompous... Beat me to the punch. I write code, it's my job. No more, no less. To try to give it esoteric meaning beyond what it is reaches a level of loathing that even I am not going to try to comprehend. It's a job! We may want to make ourselves seem more important based on our position because of the tech around us and being able to tell people "no" but in the end we're just beating the next level of rocks together.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
You are not allowed to call yourself a "software engineer" in Canada, not because the discipline lacks rigor, but because it lacks professionalism.
A profession is formed for the public good, in order for experts in the field to supervise, regulate, and discipline one another. In Canada this is carried out through non-governmental professional associations, and there is one engineering association per province. It serves public safety well and is an excellent alternative to both "buyer beware" and governmental intervention. Doctors, nurses, lawyers, and teachers are similarly regulated.
I'm personally sympathetic to the professionalization of software engineering. Basically this would mean that you would need a license to practice, all your code would be signed by its author, and the association would discipline any software author who wrote bad software, either maliciously or accidentally. Although it means hobbyists could no longer tinker, we are at the point where that hobbyist tinkering could have significant implications for the international system of computing infrastructure. Why should unlicensed software authors be any different from unlicensed doctors? Both can cause harm; in the former case, potentially more harm.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The inability for random people to call themselves software engineers in Canada is because the Real Engineers objected to the proliferation of people with MCSE's and the the like doing a discredit to the standards of the profession, both in terms of training and work results.
So go to university for 4 or so years and you'll get the respect you crave. And the nifty IRON ring, much sexier then token ring any day.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
To become an accredited engineering program in Canada, there has always been a strong requirement for a scientific background. This first created problems for computer engineering programs in Canada to become accredited, so they added courses on things like the physical properties of silicon, etc. to meet this requirement. Electrical engineering, of course, has thermodynamics, etc.
Software engineering has this problem of needing to incorporate science courses into the curriculum. Also, the field of software engineering isn't considered to have matured *as much* as more traditional disciplines. I'm pretty sure that there are accredited programs and you can be a software engineer in some provinces now. These things don't happen overnight.
I would like to have as much confidence in a piece of software as I do in a bridge, but we're not at that point yet. I do think we're getting closer. At this point, very little software is really "engineered" in the rigorous sense. Software that is tends to be much more expensive, and much more reliable. Go figure.
Most software buyers don't want to pay the extra expense for the extra quality at this point. Of course, if you're purchasing a flight control system for an aircraft, you probably have deeper pockets and more stringent requirements.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Would that mean java programmers are baristas?
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No, the baristas didn't want their title being denigrated in such a demeaning fashion.
I'm a student of both civil engineering and computer science, and I'll tell you this: most people who call themselves "software engineers" are wankers who have no idea what Engineering actually means. So they have some UML and unit tests? Well, that's wonderful -- at least they're not just randomly bashing on keyboards. But it ain't Engineering.
So what is Engineering, you might ask? Well, here's a clue: being an Engineer means that when you screw up, people die. It means that the thing you're making has to conform to standards for safety and performance. And those standards are legally enforced, and you have to be able to prove that your work meets them. It means responsibility. Ask people what professions they think require high responsibility, and they might say something like "doctor." Well, doctors really don't have all that much: unlike Engineers, they can only kill their patients one at a time. Engineers kill people in big groups.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to disparage computer science, or programming. But us programmers shouldn't pretend that our craft is anything other than that: a craft. It's not Engineering, it's not even science unless you're doing theory, and compared to either of those things we're still bumbling around in the Dark Ages.
If I were applying for a programming job, and the interviewer told me that my title was going to be "software engineer," you know what I'd do? I'd laugh at him, and then insist he change it to something else. There are exceptions to this, of course: people who are writing code to do things like controlling space ships, performing structural analysis, or regulating a nuclear power plant can likely legitimately call themselves Engineers. But the vast majority of programming jobs aren't like that.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I was unable to read the article, due to Slashdottery, but from the quote, I think Mr. Wise is failing to understand what "engineer" means. There's no minimal competency required to slap "Software Engineer" on your card, there's no license board that will certify your competence, there's guarantee to a given customer that you have any clue what you're doing, and you are ultimately not liable for damages, in most cases, if you are producing defective work.
It's not that software engineers don't care, or that we're somehow inferior. It's that there's no way to learn software engineering the way Engineering disciplines are learned. You can teach a civil engineer to make a bridge that will stand for 200 years, but there is no educational program in existence that can even begin teach a software engineer to design flawless software. That discipline simply doesn't exist. I can use mathematics to design a concrete structure that is 100% guaranteed to float. I cannot use mathematics to design billing system software that is 100% guaranteed to address all requirements. A hodgepodge of algorithm analysis, best practices, design patterns, gut instinct, pretty diagrams, and programming experience does not an engineering discipline make.
On top of all this, people make demands of software engineers that no one would make of an Engineer. Imagine that a construction crew is halfway through building the bridge which you designed, and then the government comes back to you, and tells you that no, they've decided that really they want the entire bridge to be two feet to the left. Oh, and they don't like how the concrete looks, so could we use granite, instead? Or, imagine that a car company has tasked you with creating a concept car for the Detroit auto show, but they don't quite know what it looks like or what it should do, beyond some vague hand-waving, and they're hoping that you can iteratively evolve a concept car for them, so they can give feedback as you work, but they expect this all to happen for the price of building one car. Then, they come back two months later, and tell you that they've decided that they're skipping the auto show, and instead, they need it to be road legal and ready for production by July.
So, yes, we may call ourselves "software engineers," but we're not really Engineers. We have a lot of uncertainty in our lives, and in all fairness, I, for one, don't want the liability.
In the USA, PE licensing is all but mandatory in the Civil Engineering field. It's very helpful in electrical engineering if you want to be a power distribution guy. Mechanical engineers can stand to have a PE license if they're going to be doing HVAC work. In other words, if you're going to be an engineer in construction, a PE license is very important to have.
If you're contracting out a big dollar engineering project, it's common to require a PE sign off on all designs. Where you typically don't find PE's is in unregulated industries in companies with internal engineering going on.
1. Go to university and get a degree in software engineering.
2. Work a few years till you meet the requirements for registration.
3. Pass the professional practice exams and become a registered professional engineer.
4. Now you _are_ a software engineer, so now you can call yourself a software engineer.
5. Profit??
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
- Sorry about the site being down. Its probably not a coincidence that I made Slashdot AND my host (which, to be fair, survived a Digg-rush awhile ago) is having troubles. I'm on the horn with them right now.
- A few people, who likely didn't make it to the site, like to make broad generalizations about geeks of this sort not having sex. I'd like to point out for the record that I'm married, have one child and another on the way. This suggests that I've had sex at least twice. And my wife is very beautiful.
- The intent was not to gripe about Canada's standards for the term "engineer." I only pointed that out the difference between my home country, and my current country of employ. I prefer the term "software developer" myself, but it doesn't really matter to me.
- The intent was also not to be pompous or fuel my own ego, it was to describe, as eloquently as I knew how, what most of us here on Slashdot are. Although the stigma is going away, us geeky types tend to be considered only that: geeks. When really there is art and beauty to what we do. I'm not even as skilled a programmer as I imagine most are, but I wanted to lend my prose to our art because I believe it is valuable. But flame on, if you must!
Thanks for reading, hopefully the site will be back up soon! I'd copy and paste the article text here, but I wasn't expecting this and don't have an offline copy!
Jonathan Wise
But software is different, for some reason.
Two reasons. 1: the warranty disclaimer. Like it or not, "NO WARRANTY" is stamped on to the licenses of commercial software because software consumers don't want to pay the higher cost that would be demanded if a warranty were provided. SLAs do exist, but SLAs cover services. The market is willing to pay for SLA on services, and the whole system works, even if it's not quite as perfect as we might dream.
The other big reason is that a blue screen of death doesn't result in actual death. If you're building homes or highways, you have human life in your hands, and holding you accountable for negligence seems a bit more appropriate. If you're building door locks for the home and a burgular manages to pick it, holding you accountable for negligence is ridiculous because you never promised the lock couldn't be broken. If you're building the home's foundation and it cracks, you still aren't held liable unless you warranted that the foundation wouldn't break. And you wouldn't do that unless you could afford to fix it if it did.
Simple economics. The market has supplied what the consumer has demanded. But some people get these ridiculous ideas about licensing software developers or enacting liability laws when there is NO risk to human life. They try to draw comparisons to disciplines where there are, then gloss over the details. Under even the most brief analysis, the argument doesn't hold water.
{ // no time for prose, there's software to be written.
if(article) delete [] article;
}
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http://www23.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/2001/e/groups/2173.shtml
According to Human Resources and Social Development Canada, Software Engineer is a perfectly acceptable term for that class of job. Being an American now working in Canada, I prefer '(software/web) developer' as software engineer sounds too 90s for me. But there are plenty of software engineers in Canada and no looming threat from the other 'engineer' subspecies.
And that is also why you should never be allowed to call yourself "software engineer". In a single short post you have demonstrated a contempt for regulation, law, clear communication, and honesty, which are all required for a Professional Engineer in Canada.
Despite knowing the regulations and laws behind the matter, you choose to willfully violate them, not to mention potentially defrauding others by impersonating a legal engineer.
Like others have said in this thread, being an engineer is not about being able to do your job, it's about accountability and the willingness to adhere strictly to established regulations and standards, something you obviously cannot do.
Also, as has been pointed out, people would be unwilling to underwrite the cost of a theoretically "perfect" piece of software that would never crash (barring hardware failure, or cosmic ray induced bit flipping), because given the choice between a $50 piece of software that crashes once a week, or a $9000 piece of software that crashes never, almost everyone is going to pick the $50 one and live with the occasional crash.
I really hate it when these discussions become black and white. Software quality is not a binary value. It is a sliding scale with diminishing returns for effort put in, on which we are for the most part still at the "dirt cheap" end.
I doubt I would want to pay the price of near-perfection. I'll leave that for the nuclear reactors, medical facilities and space shuttles. But the cost of due diligence — which I'll assume to mean taking reasonable, well-established, tried-and-tested steps to ensure quality in this context — is not the factor of 180 you gave. It's probably not even a factor of 5, and that's today when it's a relative overhead compared to those who don't bother.
What it would mean is having to actually follow reasonable development processes that worked. No more buzzword kool-aid for you, Mr Engineer! It would mean hiring competent people as senior technical staff instead of promoting substandard but slightly cheaper code monkeys, and spending the time and money to train those working under these senior staff properly. It would mean not letting sales and marketing staff dictate the schedules at the expense of even basic quality control.
Of course, if everyone were doing this and the industry as a whole grew up, this wouldn't cost much at all, because those same good practices actually make software development more efficient. It's just that short-sighted managers with their eye on quarterly reports and personal bonuses have an active incentive not to make the long-term investments necessary to reap those long-term benefits.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So, I should cancel the order for the shareware helicopter ?
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>> I'd like to point out for the record that I'm married, have one child and another on the way. This suggests that I've had sex at least twice. Actually, it suggests that your wife has had sex at least twice; it doesn't say anything about you.
I have a degree in civil engineering, and my professors stressed over and over again, if I fuckup, people die.
In my compsci classes - oh, look, it compiles, lets hand it in.
There's a reason they don't let Evi Nemeth teach Intro C classes - she does the right thing, and flunks people who don't do things properly.
Not a flame as such, although much of what you say is flameworthy. You lack clue.
"The professional association allows them to hide behind a large entity, with deep pockets, such that any litigation against a single individual, is futile."
Um, no. The Professional Engineer Association of which I am a member has about 18000 members and we pay about $225 per year. An annual budget of $4 million is not "deep pockets" by anybody's definition, at least not when stacked up against corporate clients with several orders of magnitude more money. More to the point, the Association doesn't spend _any_ of its money defending engineers against litigation for faulty work. They do spend it pursuing discipline against incompetent or unethical members. The record of discipline against members is public, you can usually find it on their websites. Try APEGBC, PEO or APEGGA for examples. Every month we get to read about a handful of cases where somebody is disciplined for substandard work.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Software Engineering is an accredited engineering discipline in Canada. Like all engineering fields in Canada, you must be accredited by the governing bodies. To do this you need to attend an accredited university for a 4 year bachelor of engineering program. That's right, we accredit directly in school. All programs are monitored carefully and ensure a consistent, minimum level of performance across the country. Put simply, you have to go through an accredited university- in an accredited program(bachelor of engineering)- to call yourself a Software Engineer in Canada. Or even more simply, from even our worst schools we consistently produce engineers that effing rock.