Re: Ada, Software Engineering and "weirdoes" (was License to Steal)

[Jeffrey Carter <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com>]

Kevin Rigotti wrote:
> 
> 
> There certainly is [such a thing as software engineers] here in the UK,
> I'm registered as a Chartered Engineer.
> 
> Minimum requirements for CEng are essentially a Masters degree in
> engineering and four years appropriate training and experience. Engineering
> exams and the professional bodies here have requirements common to all
> disciplines (project management, engineering maths, relevant law, etc) so I
> would consider myself as much an engineer as anyone producing a more
> physical product.
>
... 
> 
> "Jeffrey Carter" <jeffrey.carter@boeing.com> wrote ...
> > There's no easy way to determine if someone is a coder or part of that
> > 2%.
> Aren't there MEng degrees in software engineering in the States?

I have an MS in Software Systems Engineering from George Mason
University. Most of my fellow students, who have the same degree, are
not part of that 2%.

The final course for the degree was a large group project simulating a
flexible manufacturing system. A sub-group of my group was supposed to
implement the simulation of the workstations. They produced an extremely
complicated set of analysis and design documents, and at the end of the
semester had code that would not compile, much less work as required.
The day before the last day of class I designed and implemented their
software in 4 hours. I'm sure most of the people on this list could have
done the same.

This tendency to introduce unnecessary complexity is common among
coders. The ability to eliminate unnecessary complexity is common to
software engineers.

All the members of that sub-group received the MS SWSE, but that does
not make them software engineers. Their inability to implement a simple
piece of software in 15 weeks proves that they are coders. These were
people with several years experience in software development as well as
CS degrees. Clearly, neither education nor experience identify software
engineers.