From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: ** X-Spam-Status: No, score=2.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,bf72ca9e8a6b3cf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Marin Condic Subject: Re: Software Engineering in Florida Date: 1999/11/08 Message-ID: <38273B63.D37BF760@pwfl.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 546063040 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: condicma@bogon.pwfl.com References: <3826F9A8.452F305@pwfl.com> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Pratt & Whitney Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: condicma@pwflcom Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-11-08T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 ***To reply, remove "bogon" from the domain name.*** Visit my web page at: http://www.mcondic.com/