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Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com)
New submitter nervouscat writes: Game designer Ian Bogost argues that programmers shouldn't use the term "engineer" to describe themselves. He says the tech industry has "cheapened" the title, and that it's more aspirational than anything else. Quoting: "Traditional engineers are regulated, certified, and subject to apprenticeship and continuing education. Engineering claims an explicit responsibility to public safety and reliability, even if it doesn’t always deliver. ... Today’s computer systems pose individual and communal dangers that we’d never accept in more concrete structures like bridges, skyscrapers, power plants, and missile-defense systems. Apple’s iOS 9 update reportedly “bricked” certain phones, making them unusable. Services like Google Docs go down for mysterious reasons, leaving those whose work depends on them in a lurch. ... When it comes to skyscrapers and bridges and power plants and elevators and the like, engineering has been, and will continue to be, managed partly by professional standards, and partly by regulation around the expertise and duties of engineers. But fifty years’ worth of attempts to turn software development into a legitimate engineering practice have failed."
No
In Portugal the title "engineer" is subject to acreditation by the Order (much like medical doctors or lawyers) and not all students that complete an engineering school can use engineer as the professional title.
It's a distinction without a difference anyway, people mostly want to use "engineer" and "doctor" as a sign of status (replacing the old system of royal and noble ranks) while professionally it carries no difference at all.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and while continuing education is certainly necessary for the sake of both myself and the company that I do work for - I am not regulated in any way. It might be different if we did work with the government, but I have no requirement to be a Professional Engineer. I did sit for the test, but since no one at this entire company is certified there was no way to apprentice. Technically I could now sit for the test again and get the certification based on my work experience, but it is simply not worth my time or effort.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And see if you get a letter from the board that regulates engineers.
Note that trash collectors call them selves sanitation engineers and stay-at-home parents are domestic engineers.
In the US we have "engineers" and then we have "Professional Engineers (PE)". PEs are regulated in the usual US way - the certification and regulation is provided by the professional organization, but the state governments generally require certification in order to do certain types of things or to offer your services to the general public. Almost every civil engineer that I know is a PE. Every mechanical engineer that I know who works in the building trade is certified. However, the vast majority of engineers who simply design or manufacture stuff are not certified unless they have some specific reason to go through the hassle.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In Canada, it's not so much a matter of programs "should not" as "must not" call themselves "engineers". The terms "engineer" and "engineering" are legally protected in all jurisdictions in Canada, much like the terms "lawyer", "medical doctor", etc.
Programmers who are not licensed professional engineers may not call themselves engineers. The computer science and computer/software/electrical/systems engineering programs at Canadian universities are very different. The engineering programs are accredited at the national level (http://www.engineerscanada.ca/accreditation-resources) to ensure a minimum standard of education for the practice of engineering. There are also post-graduation examination(s) and internship requirements (typically 4 years) prior to licensing. There is no such accreditation for non-engineering programming/related programs.
Further, programmers who are not licensed professional engineers may not do the work of engineers, even if they don't use the term. Many companies have trouble with this one. The definition of what constitutes engineering work can be found here: http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php... - For example, a programmer who is not a licensed professional engineer may not design the software controlling a self-driving car because life and safety are at risk.
Laws & regulations: (For Ontario, but similar in all Canadian provinces/territories): http://www.ontario.ca/laws/sta... & http://www.ontario.ca/laws/reg...
Perhaps Doctor Happy has a PhD in English Literature, so he's entitled to call himself a Doctor. But, he can't call himself a Medical Doctor (MD).
Likewise, someone calling themselves a Software Engineer doesn't imply that they are a Professional Engineer (PE).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Not entirely true. When I took Engineering Ethics in college we went over this and the legal definition (in the US and Canada at least) is actually either a person who holds a P.E. in their respective discipline or someone working under the guide of a person holding a P.E (guide can mean they just review your work, we have to do this all the time at my company since P.E.s are not valid in a state unless issued by that state's P.E. authority). Software engineering is the only legal exception. Since no software P.E. actually exists a person can legally call themselves a software engineer if they hold a mild amount of experience (which is legally fuzzy) and there is no recourse if they screw something up. You can read all about it on the National Society of Professional Engineers website www.nspe.org/
All that said, many (including myself) have argued for years software engineers should have a P.E. simply because it holds the people that wrote the code much more accountable for their actions. This way you can't leave a glaring security bug in the code that you knew about but just didn't want to fix and get away without any consequence for it. Texas, Florida and the Canadian boards have all actually supported this, but without the support from the broader group across North America it won't take any time soon. The standards probably would not be any where near as rigorous as other disciplines just because it is too difficult to check/prove/test software like other fields, but a baseline standard would help tremendously.
So no the dictionary definition may not indicate that, but the legal definitions do.