Software engineering does have standards and methods to developing software. These standards and methods are applied in Defence and Aerospace applications. Software engineering was developed or conceived by NATO to manage the increasing complexity of software development.

The big problem is people often confuse software development or programming with software engineering. Calling anyone that programs a software engineer. This isn't the case. It's entirely possible to be a software engineer without knowing how to code (but impractical).

"because software rarely kills" Depends on what you mean by rarely. Therac-25 was extremely dangerous due to a software bug. And this was over 40 years ago.

Industrial robot accidents are a lot more common than needed and almost all are due to software "problems" (bad path planning, bad safety implementation, or just bugs in the control system software)

Yes these things kill less than guns, or cars, or cranes, etc. But they still have affect in a lot of those accidents.

There are very few things anymore that don't have some kind of logic built into them. Be it software or analog logic, it was still "programmed" or designed. If there was something missed in design, that can easily have adverse affects that can lead to accidents and death not immediately attributed to the software.

Engineer tends to be a protected term in many countries, so software engineer is no exception. It’s words like “programmer” or “developer” which are probably unregulated

As a software "engineer" and civil EIT, I endorse this comment.

Software without standards. Am I replying to a person who writes his own OS to run hello world?

I'd be very interested in learning more about how Canada manages "software engineer." Because whatever is being done certainly doesn't seem to include mandating where regulated professionals must be employed or punishing failures.

Saskatchewan's electronic health records system (eHealth) has had a couple of egregious failures that it shouldn't have taken a "software engineer" to prevent.

Several 911 services became unavailable during an outage that happened to also disrupt point of sale payment systems nationwide.

Both of the relevant companies are telecommunications companies (Telus and Rogers, respectively), where one would expect "software engineering" to be conducted by "software engineers" regardless of regulation.

A quick search for breaches in critical personal information will show that Canada is performing about as well as the US. Which is to say, abysmally.

There are definitely quality certifications for software. Plenty of govt acquisitions contracts require such certifications. We probably aren't far from laws or executive mandates which require such things tbh

Son of a gun

We are useful?? Thanks You Man I hope my parents also understand that Software Engineering is also a real Engineering

Meh. There's a saying in my field: "anyone can build a bridge, only an engineer can make one that barely doesn't fall down".

Humorously reductive as it is, software is what makes that "barely" thinner than human calculation would normally yield. So... Yeah. Not what I'd call a pinnacle.

This person really went and promoted Amazon. Thank you for supporting your family business

This is not the engineers fault though.

It is highly political projects, politicians offloaded their old friends and competitiors onto the boeards and other functions and in the case of the airport major planning was undertaken by a guy who is a technical drawer and not an engineer.

Most of these fuck ups could have been prevent, if the project management was done by project managers with an engineering background and if the owners side would have been represented by peoplewith a technical backgrounds.

Source: i have worked in civil engineering for public projects. We wasted 50% of the time explaining Politicians and MBA bros C-levels why they can't start by building the roof and why replanning half the stuff is a bad idea, when we are already on the market with bids for contractors.

Engineers aren't in charge of graft.

estimates are just that, a guess

You can lie on Internet.

My python scripts won't compile... I'm using GCC it keeps giving me errors :(

In this context it's heavily implied "built" is used as "engineered/designed", in the same way I "build" a shitty engine for an app

I think they're outnumbered by desk jockeys without a math degree.

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