Reddit Reddit reviews Discussion of the Method : Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology)

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Discussion of the Method : Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology)
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1 Reddit comment about Discussion of the Method : Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology):

u/TomOwens ยท 1 pointr/SoftwareEngineering

>The word engineer has been hijacked in various job titles such as software engineer, systems engineer and even sales engineer. But none of these positions are actually engineers at least not in how we use to use the word.

I fail to see how these job titles "hijack" the word engineer. I think the biggest problem is that there isn't a good understanding of what engineering is or what an engineer does, and part of that comes from the fact that there's very little published about engineering outside the context of a particular engineering discipline. We know that not all engineering disciplines are the same - I think most people would agree that a chemical engineer and a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer are all definitely engineers, but the things they do and how they do them are radically different. Even within a discipline, there are a broad variety of ways to do work. I'd highly recommend reading Billy Vaughn Koen's Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving. Koen also has an earlier paper - Definition of the Engineering Method - that is an early draft of the first 3 or so parts of the book, and the PDF full text of that is available.

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>My reason for asking is now that I work in a country where software engineer title doesn't exist and is actually software developer instead.

That's generally the choice of the company. Unless all use of the title "engineer" is regulated by the government, companies are generally free to choose their own terms and titles.

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>I'm wondering what software engineer means to you?

I'm pretty much in line with a lot of what Koen writes about, so I'd check out his paper or book. Using his definitions, I'd say that software engineering is the use of heuristics to cause desired changes in an unknown or uncertain environment or situation within the constraints and available resources. Koen defines a heuristic as "anything that provides a plausible aid or direction in the Solution of a problem but is_ in, the final analysis unjustified, incapable of justification, and fallible". Anyone who does this is conducting software engineering. However, I also think that in engineering, there's a side of professional responsibility and ethics. Koen doesn't get into this, but I believe that people who call themselves engineers also have obligations to the stakeholders in the things that they create or maintain or design, to other members of the profession, and to themselves.