...but what about the bridge? Is it being built on rock? on clay-based soil? is it in a rainy climate? Might it need to withstand a hurricane?
What is going to be travelling over the bridge? How often will things be travelling on the bridge? What will be travelling under the bridge?
There is still a lot more analysis to be done for the bridge than there is for the program.
It will probably work like other engineering disciplines. If you need something to be reliable (like a bridge or a car), you hire engineers. If you need something that doesn't need to be reliable (like a tool shed or maybe a wagon), you hire technicians or skilled labourers (or you make it yourself)...
Just apply the same thing to software: Engineers for critical software and programmers for regular stuff.
But we can (and do) put the same requirements on software. That is what the article is talking about, and that is what I myself do (I am in 2nd year Software Engineering)
Building a bridge is easier than building a piece of software?!! I have taken courses in statics, materials and calculus (the main things involved in building bridges... and I have also taken courses in computer science and discrete math (involved in building software). I can definetly tell you that designing & building bridges is harder than designing and building software!:)
Also, you said that they can do the math to verify that the bridge will not collapse. Well, you can do the same with software.
Also, what you say about testing never guaranteeing 100% correctness of code is true... However, a civil engineer CAN'T test a bridge! They can test scale models in wind tunnels, and they can try to approximate things using physics and calculus, but they will never know for sure until they actuall build the thing and let people start using it. With software, you can test the actual end product as much as you want before it goes out to people (with some exceptions, of course).
"Requiring a license to be a programmer is a bad thing. If you think it will improve software quality, you're mistaken."
But it will improve quality! Professional Engineers have to take responsibility for the software that they create! If your software crashes or otherwise doesn't work properly, you can sue the company that made it. If companies are going to get sued when their software is unstable, they wont make unstable software.
Besides, requiring Eng certification will not prevent Open Source software. Electrical Eng is required for electrical devices, but nothing is stopping you from making your own little radios and robots and things (and selling them for $6.95 each at your neighbor's garage sale)...
Electricians and electrical technicians aren't useless. They can get good jobs, they just can't legally design commercial electrical products (unless they work under a supervising engineer, of course).Electrical Engineers go through Ethics courses and Occupational Safety courses, and they have to take responsibility for the things they make.
If a professional Engineer designs something, it _MUST_ work as specified. If it doesn't, the consumer can sue the engineer that made it. With software (which is not made by engineers) doesn't work, you can't do much about it. That's the difference between engineers and non-engineers.
> As someone who has had the joys of engineering >training in Colleges, University, and the big >outside world, let me ask you this, Mr. Aspiring >(and I think a bit naive) Software Engineer:
>
>You don't have to worry about the safety of people >using your software products? Not if your >application just bitshuffles. But if you do actual >real world work (control systems, police dispatch >systems, military software, aeronautical software, >etc), then you better believe you do.
>
>You don't have to worry about unintended uses of >your product? Hah! The fact that you think this is >quite terrifying all on its own....
>You don't have to worry about people using it long >past its intended lifetime? Can you say Y2K my >friend? That was what happens when a software >person fails to think far enough ahead. Or the >Internet (IPv4) address space crunch.
This is why I put the word "USUALLY" in the sentence. A lot of times you do have to worry about these things. A lot of the time, however, you don't. Like, for instance, just making internal stuff for a company (like I do now).
Software engineering can as complicated and important as other engineering fields, but sometimes (maybe most of the time) it isn't.
Hmm... you obviously don't know much about Civil Engineering...
Oh well, as a software engineering student (yes, Software Engineering, not Computer Science. When I graduate I will have an Engineering degree), I know lots of Civil, Mech, Comp, etc engineers. Software Engineering is very similar to those other engineering disciplines, software is just easier. You still have to design and build something using lots of math and different techniques. But with software engineering you don't (usually) have to worry about climate, weather, the safety of the people who will use your product, the safety of the people who will build your product, unintended uses of your product, etc, etc, etc (as well as all the things software people have to account for, like traffic, use of the product long after its intended lifetime, and hurricanes. I hate having to make software withstand hurricanes).
But they're called Environmental Engineers, not Sanitation Engineers.
Btw, I'm in Software Engineering, and some people in CompSci have started calling themselves Software Engineers...
Let's see... Civ 3 and MOO 3 are coming out soon, there are several RPGs coming out with 'phased' or 'initiative based' or full turn based combat, there are always wargames, computer board games and card games, and my personal favourite: Worms World Party.
That's at least as many turn based games coming out now as at any time. It's not that turn based games are decreasing, it's just that real time games are increasing.
Re:Would have expected a better RPN comment from /
on
William Hewlett Dead
·
· Score: 1
RPN rules!
I can't believe some people in my engineering class still use old standard calculators (even though they all have an HP48G, as they are required in some courses).
The HP48Gers always finish Physics labs first because we get the calculations done faster and more efficiently. And then we play games on them while waiting on everyone else.
Try amazon.com
Or, if you live in Canada (and don't mind clicking more than once to shop:) try chapters.ca
Or go to a "physical" book store.
The choice is yours...
Books (unlike music) are not severely overpriced. I don't mind paying $8 CAN for a physical book. I can take a book anywhere, and read it anytime without having to worry about batteries.
I would also not mind paying a decent price for a CD. Unfortunetly, Record Companies charge obscene amounts of money for a CD (which costs pennies to manufacture, and the artist gets less money from each CD than a writer gets from a book). Music piracy is a result of the record companies charging too much.
This is totally untrue. No ISP would specifically prevent any 'paying user' from their service. They would just say that they don't support any OSs other than Windows. This way anyone can use their service and they don't have to do any more training for their tech support people.
There is almost certainly a "deal" between this company and Microsoft.
Question: "Besides, has Microsoft ever had a commercially unsuccessful PC game?"
Answer: Yes. Allegience(sp?). It sold less than 20,000 copies (not good, even for a PC game).
Being a Microsoft product does not ensure success.
What they're saying is, we should release lions onto the streets to eat the mailmen, crocodiles into the TV studios to eat the TV execs, and pack wolverines in with computers to eat webmasters/hackers/programmers? Hmm... ok, let's do it!
Anyway... something should be done (though not what I suggested) to get rid of the sea of info that is spreading throughout the world... It's only a matter of time before there are billboards on every street, advertisement banners (and "news" banners) inside our homes, and cars with ads painted all over them. If someone teleported to today from ten or twenty years ago (without being slowly desensitized), they would be horrified at all the "news" programs on TV and all the advertizements everywhere. The same would probably happen if someone today was teleported ten or twenty years into the future unless something is done about it...
Slashdot Mirror
...but what about the bridge? Is it being built on rock? on clay-based soil? is it in a rainy climate? Might it need to withstand a hurricane?
What is going to be travelling over the bridge? How often will things be travelling on the bridge? What will be travelling under the bridge?
There is still a lot more analysis to be done for the bridge than there is for the program.
It will probably work like other engineering disciplines. If you need something to be reliable (like a bridge or a car), you hire engineers. If you need something that doesn't need to be reliable (like a tool shed or maybe a wagon), you hire technicians or skilled labourers (or you make it yourself)...
Just apply the same thing to software: Engineers for critical software and programmers for regular stuff.
Probably not, but there hasn't ever been a perfect bridge or electronic device either.
But we can (and do) put the same requirements on software. That is what the article is talking about, and that is what I myself do (I am in 2nd year Software Engineering)
...and a simple program is:
int main(void)
{
return 0;
}
The analysis of that fits in less than a page.
Building a bridge is easier than building a piece of software?!! I have taken courses in statics, materials and calculus (the main things involved in building bridges... and I have also taken courses in computer science and discrete math (involved in building software). I can definetly tell you that designing & building bridges is harder than designing and building software! :)
Also, you said that they can do the math to verify that the bridge will not collapse. Well, you can do the same with software.
Also, what you say about testing never guaranteeing 100% correctness of code is true... However, a civil engineer CAN'T test a bridge! They can test scale models in wind tunnels, and they can try to approximate things using physics and calculus, but they will never know for sure until they actuall build the thing and let people start using it. With software, you can test the actual end product as much as you want before it goes out to people (with some exceptions, of course).
"Requiring a license to be a programmer is a bad thing. If you think it will improve software quality, you're mistaken."
But it will improve quality! Professional Engineers have to take responsibility for the software that they create! If your software crashes or otherwise doesn't work properly, you can sue the company that made it. If companies are going to get sued when their software is unstable, they wont make unstable software.
Besides, requiring Eng certification will not prevent Open Source software. Electrical Eng is required for electrical devices, but nothing is stopping you from making your own little radios and robots and things (and selling them for $6.95 each at your neighbor's garage sale)...
-Brian Wheeler (2nd Year Engineering Student)
It doesn't mean your are considered useless.
Electricians and electrical technicians aren't useless. They can get good jobs, they just can't legally design commercial electrical products (unless they work under a supervising engineer, of course).Electrical Engineers go through Ethics courses and Occupational Safety courses, and they have to take responsibility for the things they make.
If a professional Engineer designs something, it _MUST_ work as specified. If it doesn't, the consumer can sue the engineer that made it. With software (which is not made by engineers) doesn't work, you can't do much about it. That's the difference between engineers and non-engineers.
> As someone who has had the joys of engineering >training in Colleges, University, and the big >outside world, let me ask you this, Mr. Aspiring >(and I think a bit naive) Software Engineer:
>
>You don't have to worry about the safety of people >using your software products? Not if your >application just bitshuffles. But if you do actual >real world work (control systems, police dispatch >systems, military software, aeronautical software, >etc), then you better believe you do.
>
>You don't have to worry about unintended uses of >your product? Hah! The fact that you think this is >quite terrifying all on its own....
>You don't have to worry about people using it long >past its intended lifetime? Can you say Y2K my >friend? That was what happens when a software >person fails to think far enough ahead. Or the >Internet (IPv4) address space crunch.
This is why I put the word "USUALLY" in the sentence. A lot of times you do have to worry about these things. A lot of the time, however, you don't. Like, for instance, just making internal stuff for a company (like I do now).
Software engineering can as complicated and important as other engineering fields, but sometimes (maybe most of the time) it isn't.
Hmm... you obviously don't know much about Civil Engineering...
Oh well, as a software engineering student (yes, Software Engineering, not Computer Science. When I graduate I will have an Engineering degree), I know lots of Civil, Mech, Comp, etc engineers. Software Engineering is very similar to those other engineering disciplines, software is just easier. You still have to design and build something using lots of math and different techniques. But with software engineering you don't (usually) have to worry about climate, weather, the safety of the people who will use your product, the safety of the people who will build your product, unintended uses of your product, etc, etc, etc (as well as all the things software people have to account for, like traffic, use of the product long after its intended lifetime, and hurricanes. I hate having to make software withstand hurricanes).
But they're called Environmental Engineers, not Sanitation Engineers. Btw, I'm in Software Engineering, and some people in CompSci have started calling themselves Software Engineers...
Trees dont think. Fungi don't think. Alive these things are, are they not?
Let's see... Civ 3 and MOO 3 are coming out soon, there are several RPGs coming out with 'phased' or 'initiative based' or full turn based combat, there are always wargames, computer board games and card games, and my personal favourite: Worms World Party. That's at least as many turn based games coming out now as at any time. It's not that turn based games are decreasing, it's just that real time games are increasing.
RPN rules!
I can't believe some people in my engineering class still use old standard calculators (even though they all have an HP48G, as they are required in some courses).
The HP48Gers always finish Physics labs first because we get the calculations done faster and more efficiently. And then we play games on them while waiting on everyone else.
Try amazon.com Or, if you live in Canada (and don't mind clicking more than once to shop :) try chapters.ca
Or go to a "physical" book store.
The choice is yours...
Books (unlike music) are not severely overpriced. I don't mind paying $8 CAN for a physical book. I can take a book anywhere, and read it anytime without having to worry about batteries.
I would also not mind paying a decent price for a CD. Unfortunetly, Record Companies charge obscene amounts of money for a CD (which costs pennies to manufacture, and the artist gets less money from each CD than a writer gets from a book). Music piracy is a result of the record companies charging too much.
This is totally untrue. No ISP would specifically prevent any 'paying user' from their service. They would just say that they don't support any OSs other than Windows. This way anyone can use their service and they don't have to do any more training for their tech support people.
There is almost certainly a "deal" between this company and Microsoft.
Actually, the Americans already tried this (in 1812, see #10). They lost. . Anyway, americans don't like the cold, and Mexico is too hot! :)
Question: "Besides, has Microsoft ever had a commercially unsuccessful PC game?" Answer: Yes. Allegience(sp?). It sold less than 20,000 copies (not good, even for a PC game). Being a Microsoft product does not ensure success.
What they're saying is, we should release lions onto the streets to eat the mailmen, crocodiles into the TV studios to eat the TV execs, and pack wolverines in with computers to eat webmasters/hackers/programmers? Hmm... ok, let's do it!
Anyway... something should be done (though not what I suggested) to get rid of the sea of info that is spreading throughout the world... It's only a matter of time before there are billboards on every street, advertisement banners (and "news" banners) inside our homes, and cars with ads painted all over them. If someone teleported to today from ten or twenty years ago (without being slowly desensitized), they would be horrified at all the "news" programs on TV and all the advertizements everywhere. The same would probably happen if someone today was teleported ten or twenty years into the future unless something is done about it...