I perused the comments and didn’t see anyone mention this. The term “engineer” is regulated by every state in the US. I doubt they had Tinder in mind, but calling yourself an “engineer” without having a Professional Engineer license is illegal, at least when it comes to offering professional engineering services. It’s a protected title so that schools and bridges don’t get built by scammers–at least that was the intention. I can legally call myself an Engineer!
Just go get your license, and you should be golden lol.
There really isn’t. For example web browsers can execute assembly now and a good “web developer” (I’d call them a software engineer) will use assembly where appropriate.
With WebUSB (supported in Chrome) and the possibility to build web applications to controls physical devices there’s definitely some web developers who can claim to be proper engineers even in the strict definitions
The classic imagery of someone playing with frontpage back in the day, or screwing around with html in a text editor, sure. But those folks wouldn’t call themselves web developers (there was a phase over 20 years ago where anyone that cobbled together a geocities would declare ‘web developer’ on their resume, but I haven’t seen someone do that in ages).
However, you can get in pretty deep with code running in the browser as javascript and/or wasm. Backend gives them some nested dictionary in json or protobuf and they parse, manipulate, iterate over it, sometimes making some pretty complex visualizations. Basically a ‘web developer’ is nowadays on par with any Game or GUI application developer in terms of what they might be writing. There are a few things left out of direct reach by a browser runtime, but you have access to plenty and the backend abstractions to get something in reach of HTTP are often no easier than the thing being abstracted, it’s just reframed as ‘http’.
Ninjas, super-heroes, black-belt and terms like that are known gender-excluders. I’ve been through a couple of adjustment sessions for company standard job descriptions and it’s unreal how you can change the applicant mix by wording.
Ah yes, I’ve spent decades cringing when I meet a self-proclaimed or even peer-proclaimed “rockstar”, “ninja”, “guru”, “jedi”, or probably a half dozen other “cool” designations for a tech worker.
In the US, a conductor is the one who checks tickets, makes announcements, and delegates tasks to the crew to help ensure things keep moving on time.
The locomotive engineer is the one who is “driving” the train. They run the engine and communicate with dispatch and traffic control to keep them informed where this particular train is fitting into the overall juggling act,. They also make every effort to keep things safe (watching for signals, obstructions, etc.).
I’m not 100% sure if the terminology is different outside of the Us.
(Source: My father is a 3rd generation locomotive engineer.)
Yes, driving trains is becoming more and more important as we find out how terrible cars are for the environment. We should protect the profession fiercely!
Once you understand that everything is similar to a tag, like branch names are basically tags that move forward with each commit, that HEAD is a tag that points to your current commit location in history, and what command moves what kind of tag, it becomes easier to understand.
Suddenly having a detached HEAD isn’t as scary as you might think. You get a better understanding of fast forward merges vs regular 3-way merge.
Also understanding that each commit is unique and will always remain in the history and can be recovered using special commands. Nothing is lost in git, unless you delete the .git sub-directory.
For folks unaware, the technical git term, here, is a ‘ref’. Everything that points to a commit is a ref, whether it’s HEAD, the tip of a branch, or a tag. If the git manpage mentions a ‘ref’ that’s what it’s talking about.
Oh fuck. I didn’t think of that. Than you for reminding me.
Edit: Ah but you can only run this in your local repo. If you happen to push anything, you might not be able to run it on the remote. Many DevOps platforms won’t allow it.
Oh yeah, and anybody else who had fetched in those commits may still have them as well. It’s hard for something to be gone-gone, but it may be annoyingly-hard-to-recover-gone.
I made do with my IDE, even after getting a developer job. Outside shenanigans involving a committed password, and the occasional empty commit to trigger a build job on GitHub without requiring a new review to be approved, I still don’t use the commandline a lot.
But it’s true, if you managed to commit and push, you are OK. Even the IDE will make fixing most merges simple.
These threads drive home the point that a GUI of some sort is far superior for most users. I use git kraken, but in the past I’ve used git extensions as well, and I take advantage of so much more git has to offer than pretty much everyone here.
I swear people just want the cli to be better so they claim it is, but I really don’t get how. Especially for quickly scanning the repo, doing diffs, commiting partial files, history, blame, etc.
Every time I go into the office we take like 5 coffee breaks throughout the day. Some coworkers have switched from pods to espresso machines to bring down the cost per cup.
Is it just my team? I feel like this is pretty common.
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.
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.
Not so much well defined as fancy words. There is no example of a paying software development that has no economic impact if the software were to fail.
If I ran a small shopify page for goat feed, I’d be an engineer for making sure the site stayed working so farmers could order their feed. It could even put lives at risk!
It really only excludes someone privately working on a video game for fun.
So given that, what are they actually regulating? What are they providing to their members to help them become better “software engineers”. I say it’s nothing at all? +
If you’re a software engineer, you’re applying an engineering process to the field of software development. Adding a shopping cart to a blog can be a perfectly sound solution to the problem at hand.
Engineering becomes more important at scale, but scale itself doesn’t define engineering.
That’s missing the point. Engineers perform at a specific level. You don’t expect civil engineers to build the bridge. Can they do it? Sure. But that’s not the profession. Same with Structural Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Industrial Engineers, etc. They are at a higher level in the planification and execution process and will likely have signatory responsibilities on the project. If the bridge falls, the engineer does have explaining to do.
The equivalent for a software engineer would be (in the US) more at the level of architect with responsibilities higher than developers.
But engineers is not a protected term so everyone is an engineer now.
That’s a very arbitrary delineation that just seems to be something you worked out backwards to support your claim. I’m an EE and software developer and I sometimes do projects involving both fields (which would be computer engineering, I guess), and there’s really not that much difference. I certainly don’t see why I would label half of it engineering and the other half not.
It’s sort of based in reality. In general most software jobs are closer to technician work than engineering these days. However, there definitely are lots of software jobs which do qualify as engineering.
I don’t take any article post or comment seriously anymore. Between the era of misinformation and advancements in AI, my trust in the internet is at an all time low.
Aye, most of my 10 year career in web dev is pretty much those commands. However, some advanced git concepts are worth diving into. Stuff like git bisect that can narrow down the exact commit that broke your app is an absolute life saver. Knowing how to git cherry-pick is also a git skill professionals should be comfortable doing. Migrating work from one branch to another without merging the entire branch is pretty common.
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