this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Computer science is not engineering. Neither is software engineering.
CS isn't, but software engineering takes strict approaches to design and development for safety critical systems. I'm not talking about finance applications however.
I'm talking about like flight control computers, valve assist device controllers, medical lab automation and notification systems, weapon platform communication systems.
I'd even be a bit more generous and say that any coder could be considered a software engineer if they take a formalized approach to development, strictly due to the fact that there really isn't an official certifying delineation between those who work on systems requiring a formal approach and those who don't. This contrasted with, for example, an electrical engineer and somebody who learned all the same things from their electrical engineering parent and does it as a hobby.
Yeah, you put it together much better than I ever could.
You do have stamping engineers for telecom design. As far as I know that's the only real engineering title from the perspective that the sign off of the work carries well defined legal liability. I was director of engineering for a large org and the only stamping engineers in the org were telecom designers, not the security, software, systems, cloud, network, etc folks. Nothing against then either, but historically engineer meant something very specific prior to the rise of information technology.
Edit: actually in 2013 NCEES added a PE cert for software engineering, but it was discontinued on 2019.
DO-178 requires signatures for sign off that carry a liability risk to the software engineers.
That’s for an FAA certified flight system.
Good example. There's some domains that do carry some liability and weight to the title. Flight systems, medical devices, etc. Domains where failure can kill people and can't easily be rectified.
As a software engineer I'm inclined to agree
It's a protected title here in Brazil too. Software engineers are not licensed engineers, and their work cannot be certified if it is a job that, by law, needs to be done by an engineer. The closest there is to a software engineer here is a computer engineer.
Shows like you don't know much.