Or just accept terms change as society and technology does.
This is so jumbled. You mean to say that before software, all work was physical? Nah, engineers spent and spend a lot of time at the drawing board, too. It's just that they're not sitting at the plastic table with a sticker of a dog with a toolbox on it.
If you don't follow rules and practices that are external to you and your employer, as you might in aviation or nuclear reactor software, there's not even a chance it's engineering. It can be "software engineering", sure, just the same way "software architect" is not an "architect".
https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/Software-Engineering-ex...
> NCEES will discontinue the Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) Software Engineering exam after the April 2019 exam administration. Since the original offering in 2013, the exam has been administered five times, with a total population of 81 candidates.
If you don't want the same rigor, if you can't handle the same rigor, you don't get the same respect. Because you don't deserve it.
So it is a contradiction if you support gatekeeping but also only when its convinient to you.
That is the point I am making.
And if the "convenient to you" point is also supposed to apply to me, nope not at all. My programming would not qualify.
> A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character.
[..]
> His/her education will have been such as to make him/her capable of closely and continuously following progress in his/her branch of engineering science by consulting newly published works on a worldwide basis, assimilating such information, and applying it independently. He/she is thus placed in a position to make contributions to the development of engineering science or its applications. His/her education and training will have been such that he/she will have acquired a broad and general appreciation of the engineering sciences as well as thorough insight into the special features of his/her own branch.
If programmers can't be bothered, if their employers don't want that, either (if not even less), and yet you say times just magically change, so now people who don't fit that description get called engineers -- how do you call those who do fit that description, who still do those things? "Real engineers"? "Classic engineers?" I don't even care, but you gotta have something, you can't just pretend the real, practical, night and day difference between these things doesn't exist.
That's a quote from the 1961 Conference of Engineering Societies of Western Europe and the United States of America, not a dictionary definition.
Canada uses a different definition. The state of Missouri uses another.
"One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering. "
Gains you nothing.
> Canada uses a different definition. The state of Missouri uses another.
So? Are you lazily and deceptively suggesting that makes a difference? Or are you even imagining they are using dictionary definitions?
https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess...
> Misuse of the title engineer
[..]
> Areas of concern
> There are several places where the use of engineer is often used improperly. They include:
> Software or data engineer: In most provinces*, unless someone is licensed with a provincial or territorial engineering regulator, they cannot use the title engineer, or any variation. This applies even if the title is assigned by the employer. Alternative titles can include:
> Data analyst, Data scientist, Software specialist, Software technician, Data technologist, Data manager, Data technical expert.
As for Missouri:
> [..] any person using the word "engineer", "engineers", or "engineering", alone or preceded by any word, or in combination with any words, may do so without being subject to disciplinary action by the board so long as such use is reflective of that person's profession or vocation and is clearly not indicating or implying that such person is holding himself or herself out as being a professional engineer or is willing or able to practice engineering as defined in this section
https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=327.181
So I say the title "software engineer", in the slop hallucination sense it's too often used, where the sources either don't exist or say the opposite when you look stuff up, carries no information, other that a person is dishonest, or got fooled into repeating something dishonest. They may or may not be a programmer, they may be a man or a woman, but they're a charlatan or victim of charlatans for sure. And furthermore, the petty and stupid way people react to this fact being pointed out means they either have bad motives or Stockholm syndrome. I don't care which is which, since both are wrong.
So Missouri would only go after someone representing themselves as a licensed PE without holding a PE license.
The Canadian law is full of exemptions for non-engineering profession still being able to use the tittle "engineer". Train engineer, airplane engineer (for a driver and maintenance technician respectively).
Honestly, it's not a good law.
>
> If you don't want the same rigor, if you can't handle the same rigor, you don't get the same respect. Because you don't deserve it.
It's an interesting opinion, but the reason nobody took the exam is that, unlike other PE disciplines, there are no jurisdictions with legal requirement to hold a PE license to write software.
For example, here for a building to be constructed, the plans need to be approved by a licensed PE if it's above a certain height and footprint. Note that you only need one PE to approve, not that all engineers working on the design have to hold PE licenses.
I've worked with many software doctors, folks with doctorates (PhD either in Software Engineering or Computer Science).