Re: Is General Kind the harbinger of doom for the Mandate?

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!csc. ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mksol!mccall@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (fred j mccall 575-35]

In <733834945.AA00788@f262.n620.z3.fidonet.org> tp923021@fir.canberra.edu.au (b
en elliston) writes:

>Organization: Compact Solutions, Canberra ACT Australia

> > non-issue.  If you find software engineers today who
> > don't know Ada,
> > it takes a week or two for them to learn the syntax.

>What I would like to know is .. what classifies a "software
>engineer"?  I know people with computer science degrees who boldly
>claim that they are "software engineers".

>Whatever happened to being a Professional or Chartered Professional
>Engineer with a degree in engineering!?

If you can show me a PE exam that has a 'speciality' area of 'Software'
instead of having to pass it as some other 'kind' of engineer, I'll be
more than happy to take it.  Until then, you're going to have to
accept the Federal Government's 'definition' of what a Software
Engineer does.  Right now, PE just isn't meaningful as far as software
engineering goes.

Frankly, a lot of engineers (of the hardware variety) design and build
some of the worst software I've ever seen, in part (I believe) because
they *don't* think of it as 'engineering' and so don't apply any kind
of engineering methodology to it.  I once had a mechanical engineer
who worked for Bell insist that any software that might be needed
could easily be done in BASIC, so what was the point of all these
other languages?

[Whatever happened to being the guy who drives the train to be an
'engineer'?] 

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.