Comment by Edd1CC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Edd1CC | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Hillel Wayne did a good "study" on this by speaking to a bunch of engineers who moved into software, engineers who stayed in software, and engineers who only worked in software (yes, you can be a chartered engineer in most Western countries including the US and UK purely from software).

The strong consensus was that software is an engineering discipline, and the nitpicking you can have on any particular topic that is/isn't engineering-y can be applied across the board.

But this conversation is totally moot IMO because if you have a bachelors in computer science or software engineering, and a masters in the same discipline, and several years experience, you can apply and become the same chartered engineer from the same association that does "real" engineering.

> The strong consensus was that software is an engineering discipline

I see it as a difference in time and stakes.

We’ve built bridges and boats for thousands of years, where the outcome of failure is people die.

This has a lot to do with why it’s easy to estimate the time and cost to build a house, but it’s a rare shaman who can consistently estimate software projects well.

Once we’ve built software for even a few hundred years, we’ll probably have it pretty dialed in, too.

> We’ve built bridges and boats for thousands of years, where the outcome of failure is people die.

We write software that has killed people due to bugs too, such as Therac-25 releasing too much beta radiation killing patients.

> This has a lot to do with why it’s easy to estimate the time and cost to build a house

My parents and in-laws are property developers and I've also been involved in a build; not one was on time or budget. Some are really off budget, beyond the scale software projects that mess up are. In China they've had projects run into the billions and be decades late.

I do understand your points, but this is what I mean when I say you can nitpick any issue with software not being Real Engineering and apply it to other engineering categories too.

But yeah we may have a very different process in 50 or 100 years. I'm only 10 years into my career and it's already pretty different to when I started!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com