This is a new satire site, right? These days it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between reality and fiction in tech. The rest of their posts are pretty much spot on.
Reality in Canada.
It’s a good thing that Engineer is a protected profession and not everyone can claim it, like Lawyer or Doctor.
In the US now it’s “oh you’re an engineer? Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?”
I disagree, I believe the regulatory agencies do nothing in Canada to legitimize their claim to regulating software development. Heck, they do nothing for electronics or semiconductors or anything smaller than the power grid.
Software development is done by developers. If you are a software engineer chances are you’re working on software infrastructure that actually apply at scales that are not “add a shopping cart to this blog”.
There are reasons you ask a civil engineer for work.
You missed my point that if professional engineering societies in Canada want to take ownership of software and electronics, they better do something and not just say they’re regulating it and sit on it with no clear definition for what it even is.
If they were doing their job, we wouldn’t need to debate what a software engineer is. They’ve let us down and they’re getting away with it.
They’re regulating engineering of software and electronics.
From Engineers Canada;
In the case of software engineering, a piece of software (or a software-intensive system) can therefore be considered an engineering work if both of the following conditions are true:
• The development of the software required “the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.”
• There is a reasonable expectation that failure or inappropriate functioning of the system would result in harm to life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare, or the natural environment.
That does seem to me well defined. If you disagree then it’s okay.
Edit: taken from this: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/public-policy/professional-practice-software-engineering-en.pdf which also add context.
I cannot speak about electronics as my education was in software engineering.
You can be web dev with an engineering degree
The name of the website is a play on the satire website the onion, it’s satire.
Thanks, I didn’t even notice. It’s not a normal decision that would be made, but sometimes there’s weird stuff buried deep in the paperwork.
The only real software engineer anymore is Linus Torvalds, everyone else stands on the shoulders of giants.
Ever since TempleOS guy left us, it’s never been the same…
His name was Terry Davis
His name was Terry Davis.
His name was Terry Davis.
It’s still is, but that would be a bad joke on my end.
He was genuinely a really good developer. It’s unfortunate that he was schizophrenic.
Oh boy! Do I have news for you!
Are you doing that thing where you troll by saying something really stupid and wait for others to correct you?
No, I believe it’s called a joke
No, jokes have structure. It could be sarcasm but it could as easily be trolling.
Are you?
No, you made a statement. I asked a question. My question isn’t a troll since it has a clear yes or no answer.
An answer you’ve failed to provide.
Like… every engineer?
Funny enough, I probably did more software engineering as a web dev than I did as a software engineer at some companies.
In the UK, at least, the only difference typically between a web developer and a software engineer is £15-20k in salary. Frankly, we’re all software engineers…
What are dev/engineer salaries like in the UK? Been considering places to move to…
About half of the equivalent in the US, often less. It’s exceedingly rare to make 100k here even in a senior position, although it does exist. Median is 40-50k (pounds, so times that by 1.2 for USD).
Holy crap. That’d be a pretty substantial cut for me, but I guess that said, is the COL a lot less?
Afaik it’s similar here in Germany.
BUT you need go remember: We have social insurance and don’t need to pay 5000$ whwn taking the ambulance etc. etc.
So if you exclude that we may come close if you need to see a doc on the regular.Yes, depending on where you live rent might be similar (London isn’t much cheaper than NY or LA) but cost of living is otherwise less. Also, people tend to work much shorter hours (a limit of 37 for me, any extra is returned as PTO) and start with much more annual leave (25 days discretionary, for me, plus public holidays, plus we close over Christmas and new year’s). Furthermore there’s no health costs to pay etc. On the whole it balances out and I think the lifestyle here is better, but I do envy the extreme salaries of those in the US.
Varies heavily dependent on industry, but typically less than US devs. Also if you live outside London it’s going to be a lot less.
You average non-junior dev will probably make about 50-60k £ in london but about 25-35k £ outside london.
Senior developer can vary heavily. in london I’ve seen 60-120k depending on language and industry.
Wait so it’s possible a Senior Dev outside of London would make $35k??
I’m a senior in the north east and I’m on 32k. But cost of living and houses are sooooo much cheaper here. I am not scraping by, I’m doing good.
I’d say you’re very underpaid, I’m making about 50% more than that in a fully remote UK-based mid-level position. You should start looking for a new job, even if it’s just as leverage to get paid fairly at your current place.
To add to this, I get paid more as a junior in Wales which should be comparable to NW England economically.
However things like cars, phones, vacations, gas/petrol or electricity still cost the same everywhere…
Pounds and dollars are not the same. Also don’t move country just for a job, you can probably work remotely anyway!
I still wouldn’t say software engineering is actual engineering.
You mean you wouldn’t expect a software engineer to understand the coefficient of thermal expansion of tungsten carbide in a gas lubricated piston/cylinder pneumatic deadweight calibration system?
Yeah, me either. But I would expect one to know how to research the documentation to find out what it meant.
Even though my job title has “engineer” in it, I don’t agree that it should be considered an area of engineering.
Yeah, me either. But I would expect one to know how to research the documentation to find out what it meant.
I wouldn’t even expect most of them to this kind of research, no. On top of that, I see “engineering” also carrying some type of accountability and responsibility. For example, civil engineering, there are often regulatory bodies, codes, and standards that engineers must adhere to, and they are legally responsible for the safety and integrity of their projects. While in the software side of things, standards and best practices are more loose. Unless you’re working in safety critical industries (automotive, aviation, etc…), the “accountability structure” is completely different, if existent at all. Calling themselves Software developer or some derivate would make much more from my point of view.
And software development isn’t actually development. They don’t build houses!
Did you mean to say software architecture?
What about software painting ?
Can’t wait to see the next Mona Lisa of software as an exhibition at the Louvre!
can we ban web developers who call themselves “developers”?
also php programmers who call themselves anything?
Nah, no need for this kind of gatekeeping. Anyone who deals with js and its billions of frameworks on a daily basis deserves to be called a developer.
Agreed.
We also deserve to be called, every so often, to see how we’re doing.
Heyyy its your super duper new project manager! I hope you are feeling a-mazing because you are my a-ce on the team. Anyways i need you to do things twice as fast, because we are running low on budget after sales promised another feature without extra billing and the CEO already signed off on it. Please make this happen somehow. If this project isn’t succesfull i’ll get fired and have to sell the house. But no pressure!
Do you even know why you hate PHP?
For me, it was this
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-real-escape-string.php
Note that that hasn’t existed in PHP for years.
I don’t see what’s so bad in this one. Care to elaborate?
Blame MySQL for that. The PHP API just mirrors the MySQL C API of the same name. https://dev.mysql.com/doc/c-api/8.0/en/mysql-real-escape-string.html
Modern PHP doesn’t use it - any modern code uses PDO with prepared statements.
yeah, i’ve used it and it’s absolutely trash…
but here’s an article that sums up my feelings: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/That article is over a decade old. A lot of these issues aren’t relevant any more or have been fixed. Some weren’t even PHP issues, for example mysql_real_escape_string is a MySQL API (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/c-api/8.0/en/mysql-real-escape-string.html).
PHP isn’t the best language, but it’s not as bad as some people claim it to be, especially if you use a good framework like Laravel.
lol, no… it sucks
trust me, if you’ve already gotten used to php, you’re smart enough to learn a better language.
really just use node if you’re going that sorta route…Nice troll
Just like my
$variablesI can be anything I want. Deal with it! 🫳🎤I’m a full-stack web developer and am involved all the way through including cloud infrastructure, API development, database creation/maintenance, test automation, architecture etc.
I guess what makes a “developer” in your context different? Embedded? Kernel?
Only those who code in the same language as I am can be called developers. Everyone else is just an impostor and their technology doesn’t matter! Real programmers use my language of choice
To be fair, we do develop stuff. Nothing implies quality, so it’s not like we’re misrepresenting anything. Personally, anyone who calls themselves a software engineer and works with any web-related technology (PHP, JavaScript, etc) are the ones to be shunned.
As if webapps aren’t usurping mobile and desktop apps, anything not C# or .NET is a toy language?
c# and .net? ewww…
gimme c, c++, go, rust, ruby, python…
and umm, no dude, native apps are a lot more powerful than web apps… they are not usurped at allthere’s more of them, but there’s more scooters than motorcycles…
So if I’m using Rust to write a web app that compiles to WebAsm, what am I?
a dingo
Scooters are more efficient, get you where you need to go and cost less to maintain. Your analogy is actually pretty good in that regard.
yeah and they only get you around the neighborhood, any actual distance and a motorcycle is infinitely better…
but, it figures you’d miss that, since you’re a dumb ass webdevNow you’re throwing ad hominem around. You don’t need to be toxic to communicate your point, web development did at one point have a lot of growing to do and I can admit that there is still plenty of progress to be made. In 2024 however, ignoring the web ecosystem as any type of developer is purely traditionalist elitism.
bruh, this is programming_humor… chill, im sure you’re a fine human being
🖕
sorry, my browser doesn’t support unicode
I mean who cares? But also why? My old job title was “software engineer” and I just did web dev.
it’s satire
Honestly, nobody should call themselves an engineer unless they literally drive trains for a living.
Driving a train is engineering?
In North America, the driver of a train engine is called an “engineer”, yes.
I see, TIL. That’s different from Germany, where Ingenieur is a protected term.
In the railway context an engineer was the person who worked the engine.
In German the word comes from Latin roughly meaning inventor. Presumably the general usage of the word engineer in English has the same etymology.
Infrastructure erasure in the states is so bad that people who build it for a living aren’t even considered anymore.
Funny and infromative
I mean, engineering is really problem solving, and not do we web developers solve problems. We may have made most of them ourselves, and new ones when we solve those, but we do solve problems.
The term engineering is not about problem-solving, especially when differentiated from development. Engineering is about deliberate understanding and decision-making, about giving it an architecture, a structure.
You can develop without any structure, solving an issue, without understanding a bigger context or picture or behavior. But that’s not engineering.
I get this is satire but people truly believe this. Web devs literally create software that runs nearly every facet of modern life.
Now this is the kind of ‘news’ I’d like to see posted on hackernews just to read their techbro shit takes.
What if my job title says that? Who’s going to tell my employer they’re wrong.
Then again, “full stack software engineer” as a title might also well just be buzzwords.
!And yes, I know the site is satire lol.!<
I liken a software engineer to someone like an architect. Architects will spend countless hours doing research, sketching out designs, creating documentation and presentations, and maybe even building to-scale models. But one thing they don’t do is actually build their designs. The constructions workers do that. And in the case of software (be it web or otherwise), those people are the developers.
Now, there are exceptions to every rule. I acknowledge that - especially in computing - it’s possible to blur lines. But I still feel there many more developers than there are real software engineers.
But architects aren’t engineers either! We have engineers in building construction, they are called engineers.
They ensure all required calculations are done, all safety standards are adhered to, they complete detailed designs, and they sign off on a project legally so things like quotes and timelines have legal teeth.
And, unlike engineers in manufacturing whose deep-pocket corporations bought an exemption, Engineers in the A/E/C field are licensed. And if you screw up you can lose your ability to work in your field…forever.
I haven’t met an “engineer” who isn’t developing code. This is such a weird distinction. The people asking for a design are the customer, the high level design handled by the product manager, the nitty gritty is handled by the software engineers. Some businesses may make a distinction for payroll purposes but there is no prevailing standard.
Lol. tinder fact checks bios? Hilarious…
And this why i aim to get a PhD.
So you can get banned from Tinder for impersonating a doctor?
(I too have a PhD. I feel your pain)
I just want to get a PhD so I can start my mad science career on the right foot.
This is not a new kind of policy for Tinder. In the past, PhDs in Social Sciences were banned for impersonating ‘doctors’.
How were they impersonating doctors? How does Tinder verify any of these claims?
First of all, it’s a pretty obvious joke.
In this case, the joke is: “people with a PhD are doctors. It’s a doctorate. But the field of social sciences is not real science, and thus shouldn’t count as a doctorate.”
I get the joke, what I don’t get is how one can impersonate a doctor on Tinder. Are people wearing lab coats in their pictures or something?
The joke isn’t that they’re impersonating a medical professional. It’s that they’re impersonating the title of “doctor” by claiming a PhD. Someone with an Art History PhD is a doctor, but the joke here is that they aren’t really deserving of that title.
Dude, I get the bloody joke!
I’m very specifically asking how they are impersonating it on Tinder. Is it a picture? Is there a field in Tinder you can fill out with your job title? Do they write it in the description?
And I’m asking how Tinder is verifying that.
Is there a field in Tinder you can fill out with your job title?
Yes
And I’m asking how Tinder is verifying that.
They’re not. It’s fake
Oh, I see now. It’s a satire article! Given I don’t use Tinder and have seen exclusive dating apps, it really wasn’t far-fetched.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Tinder isn’t verifying it. It’s just a joke.
What if they are actually a software engineer, with a cert? >_>;
I have worked with actual cert’d engineers on web projects, lol
with a cert
Engineering isn’t usually a cert. It’s a degree. I have a Bachelor of Engineering, majoring in Software Engineering. There’s probably a cert level qualification in software development, and frankly it’s probably just as good at producing effective software developers as an engineering degree, but it would be misleading, if you claim that only those with some particular qualification can call themselves engineers, for the qualification to be a cert.
In Canada the Cert and the Degree are separate.
You typically through getting your degree also become certified, but the key is while your degree lasts forever, the Cert has to be maintained and renewed.
Cert has a lifetime and expires and you have to keep it up to date.
In Alberta for example the regulatory authority is APEGA: https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/certifications-in-alberta/engineer/
I think even technically the license is also a separate piece of paperwork.
Degree: you completed school at some point
Cert: up to date on current practices, must be maintained, requires the degree
License: you are legally allowed to practice in the province/country and have registered. Requires degree+cert
Ah right, you’re talking certification. I was thinking certificate, because “Certificate I – Certificate IV” are very common less-than-Bachelor qualifications where I live, usually shortened to Cert I–Cert IV.
Obviously the terms “certificate” and “certification” are etymologically basically identical, but their meaning when it comes to the type of qualifications they represent are significantly different.
It’s a license issued by the state. As in, “you could go to jail for practicing engineering without a license.”
(Source: was on track to become a licensed civil engineer until I decided to do software “engineering” instead.)
software “engineering”
See, the thing is, software engineering in Australia is engineering. My degree was accredited by Engineers Australia and had the same requirements as a civil or mechanical engineering degree.
Of course, it definitely is still the black sheep of the engineering world. In the vast majority of (possibly all) cases, practising as an actual engineer is no different from practising as someone with a different degree (like IT or computer science), practising with a lower-level qualification like a certificate, or practising after being entirely self-taught.
In the US, to become a licensed engineer you need to get an accredited bachelor’s degree in it, and then pass the “Fundamentals of Engineering” exam to become a state-licensed “Engineer in Training (EIT),” and then work in the field for four years, and then pass the “Principles and Practice of Engineering” exam to become a state-licensed “Professional Engineer (PE).” The degree is just the first step.
Does Australia let civil engineers certify construction plans straight out of college? (Answer: apparently – and surprisingly – some states do!)
Fwiw in my previous comment’s second paragraph when I said “practising as an engineer” that meant “practising as a [software] engineer”. I wasn’t claiming that that’s how it works for all fields of engineering, but pointing out specifically how software engineering is more similar to degrees in computer science, IT, or being self taught.
@LinearArray Deleted Tinder around a week ago.
It used to be really good back in 2012-2014 but not anymore I think.
It was good… when dating apps were considered socially taboo lol.
@TankovayaDiviziya
True haha. But also the the algorithm was better. When Tinder needed to cash in for the investors the quality dropped because then the focus became about making money more than it’s about satisfying the users. We have to remember that if you get a match which gets into a relationship, Tinder loses two customers.
