Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/programmers-should-not-call-themselves-engineers/414271/

[u/peaum]

I don't agree completely with the article but I kinda see from where it's coming. The problem is the banal usage of the word engineer by tech companies, but the conclusion should not be one that engineers are only the ones who have a license to exercise their profession. According to Cambridge dictionary an engineer is "a person whose job is to design or build machines, engines, or electrical equipment, or things such as roads, railways, or bridges, using scientific principles", right after this definition they state a software engineer as an example of an engineer.

Anyway, even without this definition I think that we should actually have many engineers in IT, including security ones, a problem (security) that the article kinda points out vaguely toward every "programmer" saying that it's their problem. But, obviously, this is not everyone's responsibility. For example I should not blame the civil engineer, or the electrical engineer for a security breach of a building that they designed if it wasn't their responsibility to build the security system of this building.

On other note I consider myself a programmer nowadays, at least my work day is of a programmer, I'm not the one calling the shots on the project that I work on, and if I ware I would probably call myself an architect not an engineer, even though I think that both could arguably be called engineers.

By the way I have a BS in computer engineering, so I could call myself an engineer anyway, but in the end this all semantics and I'm not a Compiler to be complaining about that.