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What I want to become Vs What I do
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Programmers mostly aren't really engineers and that's ok. I don't want to be an engineer.
I personally disagree. Took 3 years of Electrical Engineering courses in college but finished with a B.S in Computer Science. Both are valid engineering disciplines, the only thing lacking on the computer side are standardized licensing tests and an oversight body. Software engineers have to build software that can affect life and death too, but somehow we don’t have as much regulation in the US which is super odd to me.
What makes something engineering vs not? Personally what I do doesn't feel like engineering because I imagine engineering as being about following a particular process and doing things in a very cautious and structured way, where programming is normally way more chaotic.
Your notion of an engineer is correct in a wide sense
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer
The fact that you feel programming is not that makes me sad. But likely dependent on what software and what you work with. For example, if you build software for NASA or Baxter and dialysis machines and the likes, you'll get fired fast for not being structured. Working for Elon Musk and Twitter... Well...
I don't think it has to be a sad thing. Without that sort of structure you can be more imaginative, which has many advantages. Again, I don't want to be an engineer, I feel that would suck all the joy out of it and just isn't my style. That isn't to say an engineering approach to programming doesn't exist or isn't useful/necessary in some cases, but I would say it isn't the norm and probably shouldn't be.
I personally think it's a bit of a fallacy to equal structure with less creativity.
Look at Calatrava https://duckduckgo.com/?q=calatrava&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images
Further, you can't design something like the Burj Khalifa without creativity
Maybe the line goes where you are risking peoples life or not, maybe somewhere else. It still makes me sad that you equal programming with chaos. But that is very context driven. The drive for new software, new interfaces, new tech overall naturally breeds less oversight and less structure naturally ofc. But it doesn't have to be that way, nor should it be if you ask me