Re: Software Engineering in Florida

[Marin Condic <condicma@bogon.pwfl.com>]

tmoran@bix.com wrote:

> >I can think of no field of engineering normally recognized as such which does
> >not in some way deal with the arrangement of physical matter into some kind of
>   I think this is a red herring.  Society/the Law has no particular
> interest in regulating based on whether physical matter is rearranged.
> The important thing is the professional's impact on the citizenry.
>

I think my point was that, despite any possible need for Society/Law to regulate
what we do, that doesn't make us necessarily "engineers". Lawyers, Beauticians,
Doctors, Barbers, and Veterinarians are all regulated by law. That doesn't make what
they do "engineering". And I don't think it needs to be a matter of esteem either.
Doctors are at least as - if not more highly trained than engineers. Doctors make
considerably more money than engineers. Doctors are more respected at country clubs
and social gatherings than are engineers. This does not make doctors "engineers" nor
does it denigrate them to say they are not "engineers".

>
>   Once upon a time there were a lot of "engineers" designing steam
> boilers, which blew up entirely too often.  Criminal or civil penalties
> on the designer were of scant comfort if many people were killed and
> great damage was done.  So legislatures started requiring certain
> qualifications of such "engineers" to lessen the problem.  As software
> insinuates itself into more and more areas, and the damage done by bad
> software starts to appear in large type on front pages, it's reasonable
> to expect legislatures will use the same technique as a tool to lessen
> the problem.
>

Of all the possible professions on the planet, "Politician" has got to be the most
deadly. Even deadlier than "Paid Criminal Assassin" - More deaths have been caused
by Presidents/Kings/Dictators (and other job descriptions) than by all other
professions combined. (And these are the people we want to be in charge of all the
guns? :-) Nobody licenses or regulates politicians. Yet they are the absolute most
deadly and dangerous profession there is.

The fact that you can kill lots of people does not mean that a) you are or should be
regulated or b) that you are by that same fact an "engineer". Maybe software geeks
should be licensed. Maybe not. But what does that have to do with wether or not what
we do should be labeled "engineering"?

>   Look at Knuth on sorting.  He does not in fact give a single "sort
> algorithm", but shows many, which are optimum in different
> circumstances.  An occasional sort of a few thousand short records on a
> fast machine may be appropriately handled by whatever sort is most
> conveniently available in the library, just as you can bridge a small
> ditch with any old plank.  But someone designing an external sort of a
> massive, nearly sorted, database, shouldn't rely on that library sort,
> but should in fact call on a "Sort" expert, just as the CE's would have
> a "Cantilever Bridge" expert.

Well, maybe the "sort" argument is weak - but it still seems fundamentally different
to me than the work done by most engineers. The bulk of what ME's do is redesign the
exact thing over and over again with different optimizations for the different
usages. Software geeks don't generally work in that environment - which is one
reason that what we do is so hard to measure. We seldom design two systems that are
enough alike to make any sort of fair comparison. Sure we attempt to reuse as much
as we can and their are systems where we go through multiple iterations of building
new software based on old software to solve very similar problems (engine control
software comes to mind! ;-) and to that extent what we do starts looking more like
"engineering" because we can apply rules and build on a body of knowledge about the
particular problem domain.

But while I like holding the title "Engineer" - I'm not sure that maybe we don't
have more in comon with Mathematicians or perhaps Political Scientists. Or perhaps
our discipline can't be correlated to what someone else does and we just have to
stick to calling ourselves "Computer Scientists" and work to make the profession as
respected as any other. I've watched the software world try for a long time to make
itself into "Software Engineering" but I'm beginning to become convinced that maybe
we're really something new & unique and not just a branch on the "Engineering" tree.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
If you hurry you can, for a short time only, still find me at:
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
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