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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

> We have determined, through experimental proof, that bootcamps can make (some) novice non-degree-holders into employable software engineers in 3 months

Engineers or developers? How can you differentiate?

I've been writing code for about twenty-two years now (fifteen getting paid for it), I build large systems with tight fault tolerances and work to deeply understand my failure cases.

Your "6-18 months" is probably enough to make a code grinder. I wouldn't say twenty years, with current tools and current culture, has made me an engineer.

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> Engineers or developers?

> Code grinder

Well those semantical terms won't get you anywhere. There isn't a difference which will reach consensus.

But alas, I see the root of your argument. Universities aren't teaching people to be great for corporate America, despite how warped that ideal of higher learning has become. Coding schools are sticking to what is relevant for current roles. Many of the coding schools already know what the current roles are and act as glorified recruiters making the bulk of their earnings on the placement of their students in roles they have already lined up.

Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack.

> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack.

I fully agree, and I think that's a great job to teach to and for people to have. I think conflating it with this-had-better-frigging-work engineering is dangerous to both the profession and the people who trust us to do good work for them (both as employers/clients and as a society).

Engineer means something. Hell, I build systems expecting them to fail and I understand how to proof them, to the best of my time/cost allowances, against failure. I'm still not "an engineer". And--and this is important--I am also not held liable like one.

I get and even agree with your point, but that distinction already doesn't exist in current software engineering. Unless there is some sort of rules and/or punishment against calling something engineering when its not, like being responsible for failures the same way the guys who engineer bridges are responsible, then its just gonna be meaningless words. I have seen companies convert people from "Software Developer" to "Software Engineer" just to make them happier without a raise.

If it actually meant something we wouldn't have the industry standard interview consisting of seeing if you can do basic comp sci algorithms either. As far as I am aware other engineering disciplines don't get asked to whiteboard something like calculus to see if they can do the basics when they go for a new job

Choosing to make a muddy distinction worse because "everyone does it" is not really deserving of applause, is it? I mean--words mean things. (And, to that end, I do think that the word "engineer" should be federally protected to distinguish us idiots from professional engineers.)

And, yes, the tire fire that is interviewing is a large part of this.

I don't mean to muddy it, its already muddied. Saying someone is a lawyer is easy, if they passed the bar they are a lawyer. If someone has a medical license they are a doctor. There is no equivalent for software engineering. If you got 20 software engineers in a room you'd end up with 25 definitions for what a software engineer is.

A good portion of the software community does not want a governing body over the industry. If we are going to accept that, then we also need to accept that titles are meaningless because there are no standards.

I don't accept that and I think that those people are, by and large, why we need one.

But, by "muddying", I was referring to the original post I replied to that pimped services for turning people into somewhat-competent web developers and calling them engineers. Sorry for the confusion.

> Being productive in a corporate environment doesn't take much time at the right level of the stack.

Exactly the same could be said about electric engineers, except that they are regulated and need to be certified.

'Semantical terms'? Semantics literally just means 'meaning'. If you don't want a discussion to involve discussing meaning, what do you want it to discuss? Your grammar? Your spelling? Your syntax?

I appreciate your comment. Call me when you're willing to sign off on your code as doing only what it is meant to do, and no more. Call me when you can demonstrate that your code functions all the time, every time.

This is not denigration. I have worked with real engineers that wrote code. Sign off on it, and I will listen.

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