I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).
I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).
Oh man, I didn’t think that’d work haha… Kind of you to offer but I was recently promoted and wouldn’t feel right leaving now. Partially out of respect for my boss and partially because we are severely understaffed. But seriously, thanks for offering to ask around. Very generous of you to offer your help to a stranger ❤️
I’m learning that I’m just enough of a front end dev to make a very ugly site. Navigating all the various CSS and JS frameworks feels like pulling teeth.
Having a familiarity is absolutely a great thing. The syntax isn’t alien, so, debug and guiding juniors through figuring out why their project isn’t working isn’t too terrible. The typing is probably what drives me crazy the most. It’s just bad and the standard library doesn’t seem to be equipped to handle every type that it can “support” cleanly.
since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon
Sorry to hear that. I hit the same pothole about 6 months ago. I had been so fine with avoiding JS, but the guys building our admin console broke their build and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Even worse, then I had to write up best practices for JS
Yeah. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do the programming. Unfortunately, I had to guide the debug. Happy to help people learn but the language, especially in its typing, is just awful.
I don’t know where “software engineer” started but in Australia engineers have to study for years and then do a minimum amount of study every year to keep their license. Which we don’t have to do. I’ve always been weirded out by Software Engineer even though it seems to be becoming more common.
Engineering is engineering. You design it, you build it, you test it. Engineering. We shouldn’t gatekeep words.
With that said, I recognize that certain engineering disciplines have overlap with public safety, and should come with some qualifications to back it up.
Single software engineer can nowadays do more harm than most of other engineers. Just one SQL injection and all the people’s personal data have been leaked. Single bug in car self driving software and the car drives in to school bus.
I like the title only because I got a degree in computer engineering and passed the fundamentals of electrical engineering exam. I definitely don’t do any engineering but it makes me feel like my degree wasn’t a waste.
Edit: also that was an 8 hour test that I really took for no reason.
Software engineer is an accurate term for a lot of roles. The problem is when software engineers step out of their lane and start pontificating about other engineering fields.
You have to do that to be a “Chartered Engineer”, “Professional Engineer” etc. Some states require you to have some kind of registration to practice in some roles.
“Engineer” remains an unprotected term in all states and territories as far as I know but I could be wrong. It’s definitely unprotected federally.
Is “IT” a general term for tech workers in some places? I keep seeing people refer to it as such, but where I am, it is a term which primarily describes networking and infrastructure professionals.
Yes, that is consistent with my understanding - networking and infrastructure. Engineering and management is generally not considered IT where I am unless they are directly supporting networking and infrastructure. But someone writing code for a game or app wouldn’t be IT.
The wiki link states software to be included in the definition. Management is not IT of course, but as there exists management in IT is used in the image I’d guess.
Right, there is definitely a software side of IT, but not all software is IT adjacent. IT software is really a very small field these days, compared to software in general.
Software devs and designers usually fall under IT is my understanding but I can see why many people/places would make the distinction. Especially for companies that only write software, their IT would more be the infrastructure, but if they’re only writing software for in house use that’s more on the IT side. I could be completely wrong about this too, just how I saw them grouped.
Network engineering is kind of in the middle where you take the skill set of help desk and office management. This often leads to help desk and software development both falling under the organization in information technology. Application support also often falls under this category.
Now you may be asking, what happens if the APE loader isn’t installed on my system? In that case, it’ll try to dd the 4kb copy of the APE loader that’s embedded within the host executable, out to the safest folder that’s guaranteed to work, namely ${TMPDIR:-${HOME:-.}}/.ape. If your operating system defines the POSIX-specified $TMPDIR variable, then the ape loader will become $TMPDIR/.ape. Otherwise if $HOME is defined, it’s dropped in in $HOME/.ape. Then, if neither is defined, ./.ape is created in the current directory
Floats are only great if you deal with numbers that have no needs for precision and accuracy. Want to calculate the F cost of an a* node? Floats are good enough.
But every time I need to get any kind of accuracy, I go straight for actual decimal numbers. Unless you are in extreme scenarios, you can afford the extra 64 to 256 bits in your memory
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