Are software engineers real engineers?
There are a couple of issues with this question:
- first off, in software development we interchange the words "programmer", "software developer", and "software engineering"
- second, there is the issue of prestige due to societal norms, that engineers are better than developers similar to doctors vs nurses
Thus a better purposed term would be a "software craftsman", because
> software is not a kind of engineering, being much more free-form creative and flexible. We’re not line workers but artisans, artists, people who take pride in the craft we do and the flexibility of our states.
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@hackernews@die-partei.social - Are We Really Engineers? - https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/
'Craftsman' is possibly not far off - here is some more thoughts on that...
Perhaps 'craftsman' has a type of old style association so not necessarily wrong, just needs getting used to, as it was used in the more material world probably more than anything now...
And as another suggestion, for example 'crafter' could be the more obvious as as it is less the wood material 'man' etc crafts...man which tends to be heard as a gender than suffix with crafting and hand work
so more the general craftER can be better in sense of software etc 'crafter' to compliment the word software and add adjective to description (craftsman is a noun) so rather than wonder what that is the ER version is more focussed on crafting
For the word 'Engineering' this has multi-meaning also so if arguing for the case of software *engineer* then it's not far off (or maybe there are just too many type of software xyz roles to cover this all precisely) but anyway you could say an engineer is the 'art or science of applying scientific knowledge to practical problems' - which could be measurable for application of design in software that includes but is not only aesthetics erc part of software, so does cover this
All this is maybe confusing... but
Overall 'crafter' sounds quite neutral and is a good enough add-on to 'software' as adjective which competes / confuses less making 'software' the major word
But anyway I'm a mind crafter .... so what do I know about anything?
0_0
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@barefootstache @hackernews@die-partei.social
'Craftsman' is possibly not far off - here is some more thoughts on that...
@freeschool
I noticed the gender portion of the word "craftsman" and yes one could put it in the gender neutral aspect of "crafter" or just keep the gender specific role. Craftswoman would be just as acceptable.