I just lost my job as a civil engineer and I’ve been trying to find resources, forums, staffing agencies, etc to help land me a job and all of what’s out there online talks about faang, leetcode, programming bullshit, etc. Call yourselves Computer scientists, programmers, hogs, i don’t care, please for the love just stop dominating all the ‘engineering’ discourse.

  • Hexbear2 [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Haha, I feel this to my soul.

    "software engineer?" No, you're a programmer. Degree in computer science? Great! Call yourself a computer scientist. Frankly, as an engineer (mechanical engineer with a heat and mass transfer graduate degree) with comp sci undergrad minor. It has always seemed silly to call yourself a software engineer. I mean, I write things using Matlab, OpenFOAM, some pipe flow modelling software, and similar programs. I still call myself a mechanical engineer and I probably write more/better code than all these so-called software engineering who contributed to facebook or something other garbage useless waste of time.

    • edge [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      A programmer is significantly closer to "engineer" than "scientist". Scientists do research, engineers make things.

      • tails__miles_prower [none/use name]
        ·
        2 years ago

        True, it's not just a title. It's also literally a verb. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/engineered

        To plan, manage, and bring about by skillful acts or contrivance: engineer a business takeover; engineer social changes by legislation.

      • Hexbear2 [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        A programmer is more like a technician, having hands-on knowledge on how to do something, but not having the theory behind why they are doing what they are doing, and that's o.k.

        • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          The point of the CS degree is that if you remember what ypu learned, then yes you do have the theory behind what you're doing.

          • facow [he/him, any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Yeah I think they're trying to make a distinction between a programmer and a software engineer

            • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              The thing is that programmers also generally do have a CS degree, and in fact in many places you get a far better understanding of what's going on taking a CS degree than taking a software engineering degree.

                • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  A degree from a school of engineering to prepare you to be a software engineering, and that gives you an engineer title in places where the specialization exists, along with all the classes that engineers have to take and so on. Basically what the thread says software engineers should be if they exist. For example: https://www.concordia.ca/academics/undergraduate/software-engineering.html

                  Overwhelmingly, they teach even less of the relevant theory than a CS theory. Which, by the way, capitalist ghouls love to complain isn't necessary and shouldn't be taught.

                  • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    Which, by the way, capitalist ghouls love to complain isn’t necessary and shouldn’t be taught

                    in this way capitalist ghouls are being silly and risk damaging the ability of future workforce's ability to maintain and significantly change codebases

                  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    Which, by the way, capitalist ghouls love to complain isn’t necessary and shouldn’t be taught.

                    There's a lot of dumb CEOs in tech, and a lot of myopia with the "learn to code" people. But luckily the industry has mostly managed to maintain its emphasis on at least a baseline understanding of the underlying theory. Christ, imagine where we'd be if people just gave up on teaching data structures and algorithms, lol.