In absolute terms the number of people with deep knowledge here is probably higher than it’s ever been. The ratio has changed, which is what I think he’s actually lamenting here. He mentions civil engineering; one thing I find myself often bringing up is that software engineering is a brand new discipline. The operating domain of softare is immense, maybe infinite. So I’m less curmudgeonly than Jon is here, we’ve got a barely century or so of software experience as a species, there’s gonna be slop.
Hillel Wayne offers a much better, more formally grounded survey of how software engineers compare to “real” engineers - https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/. He actually interviews civil engineers turned software engineers, among other “Crossovers” as he dubs them. Turns out, software engineering is as “real” as other types of engineering to crossovers who’ve done both. Software engineers just _think_ that other types of engineering are more real.
The likelihood is low that Jon has spoken to any meaningful number of civil engineers in making his comparison to the software engineering field. Rather, he reasons from some idealized version of what he believes civil engineering to be.
The “crossovers” all studied engineering. I think that makes this an incredibly biased sample. At best, I think one can say that those who studied engineering apply the engineering design process they learned in other engineering fields to their new jobs in software.
Beyond that, I think the survey would need to expand the pool to a representative group working in software. Possibly those who studied CS, those who studied other fields, self-taught without formal higher education, and include people who studied (and possibly are licensed) software engineering, to provide a control group.
Even within the engineering field, not everyone is an engineer or practicing engineering. There are different levels of education and credentialing and those people fill useful positions. For some reason everyone in software insists that they are doing engineering and are an engineer without having studied any engineering topics. (I’m not talking about having to cover the chemistry, physics, differential equations and other topics that aren’t core to software.)
Thanks for taking the time to read the article! My responses are key’d by paragraph number.
1. The study is comparative in that it answers the question do engineers from other fields consider software engineering “real”. The interviewees answer more than whether they apply their an engineering design process, they comment on what they see in the industry from others, and resoundingly agree that software engineers are abundant and no different than “real” engineers.
2. We agree, aspects of the study could be improved. Nonetheless, I think Hillel’s analysis serves its purpose in leading the discussion forward on whether software engineering is “real” in a more productive direction than Jon Blow’s comments do, necessarily, as the topic of this HN thread.
3. Part 1 of Hillel’s article, linked above, addresses and agrees with your point directly. Suggesting that we don’t have a vocabulary vibrant enough to describe all aspects of the work people do with and on software yet.
I'll be honest, I've read the article several times. I'm way too dumb to get what the author's point is.
I think the video opens up more interesting lines of discussion. There are two points I think the video has that are relevant. One is the discussion on deep knowledge (there is a body of knowledge to learn about software engineering including fundamentals of the discipline). The other is really about the engineering design process (there are domain specific techniques for software that can be used, but it's common to all engineering disciplines).
As other commenters mentioned, the fundamentals are probably more accessible and more known now than at any other time. The minimum bar to enter the field has probably gone down substantially because of all of the abstraction and tooling that exists, and because there is no standards to what job titles are, everyone wants to be called an engineer.
Sure, this is probably a little much and there are plenty of people working in the field that don't need to know much of it. That brings us to the vocabulary, which is already in place! Engineer, technologist, technician, skilled trades, and unskilled labor are different categories of jobs within the existing fields of engineering. These range from requiring no formal education to requiring years of formal education. Again, everyone wants to be an engineer and there is nothing in America stopping them from calling themselves one.
