Re: Software Engineering in Florida

["Robert I. Eachus" <eachus@mitre.org>]

"M." wrote:
 
> Electrical engineering can't be taught in classrooms without appropriate
> design projects on the side (and I mean _design_ projects, with engineering
> notebooks and design documentation.  Not "turn in a circuit/program that
> works.").  Is this what you mean?

    Yes, electronic engineering can easily be taught in a laboratory. 
But for power engineering, another facet of electrical engineering it is
difficult or next to impossible.  The diciplines used to be separate,
and have separate professional societies the IRE and the IEE.  My father
was a member of both, and worked on the merger.   For example, you
really have to get out into the "real world" and manage a power grid to
understand the emergent properties that occur with a large, complex,
geographically distributed system.  Similarly, software engineering is
heavily involved in the emergent properties of large and complex
software systems.  At RPI there were great industrial resources nearby
that allowed graduate students (in both software and power engineering)
to get the necessary experience outside the school.  Worcester
Polytechnic Institute also has a software engineering work-study program
that is well regarded around here. 
 
> You can be considered one, and even call yourself one if you are an employee
> of a company.  But in some states you can't do business directly with the
> public as an "engineer" unless you have qualified for and passed the exam.
> (By the way, I am not a lawyer, and these are not professional legal
> opinions.)

   Correct--they are not professional legal opinions.  I am not a lawyer
either, and the rules vary significantly from state to state.  Generally
calling yourself a Professional or Registered Engineer without a license
is bad juju, and signing drawings as an engineer can get you lots of
liability and occasionally jail time unless you are a PE or have a PE
signature on the drawings too.  But most states do provide for
unlicensed engineers to call themselves engineers without passing the
whole PE exam.  If the requirements were otherwise, it would be a Catch
22, you couldn't qualify for the experience requirements.
  
> I think this is completely unnecessary, not only because it is too
> restrictive, but also because it's necessarily vague on the qualifications
> for a "masterpiece."  Furthermore, I think professional societies for
> software (esp. the IEEE CS) are underutilized.

    Both the ACM and the IEEE CS have consistantly wimped out on the
licensing and professionalism issues. A genuine software engineering
professional society will have to be a different entity.  This doesn't
rule out IEEE or even ACM involvement, but it would have to be a new
group with different membership.   This does not mean that there is not
a major need for what ACM and IEEE CS do provide their members, just
that they are not professional organizations, and dumping a substantial
fraction of their membership will never happen.

-- 

                                        Robert I. Eachus

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