After some thought, I've decided I can call myself a "software developer". I'd previously been disqualifying myself, but I've made some small pip-installable packages and contributed to a handful of projects... so might as well stop gatekeeping myself

@elbeejay
Just don't make the jump to "engineer". That is a very abused title with a specific meaning.

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@yisraeldov @elbeejay It depends where in the world you are. In the US and Canada “engineer” is a protected term that cannot be freely used, whilst in countries like France there are no such rules. In the U.K. we have the term “Chartered Engineer” because “engineer” has been eroded to the point of being meaningless as every technician and handyman styles themselves as such (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer). It’s really not a big deal in Europe like it is in North America.

Personally, I would like to see (developers|programmers|software engineers) have a formal accreditation process to distinguish those in the profession but alas, currently we do not

@rlamacraft @elbeejay See, but you can't do that today because of "gate keeping." I would like to have something like a Developers guild or something like that.

@yisraeldov @elbeejay Yeah, I think it would do wonders from collective action, upholding ethical values, to making hiring easier. It could also act as a platform for coordinating open source development, and ultimately make software a more rigorously practiced engineering discipline.

I think we would just have to look past the people complaining about being gatekeepers. Practically every other professional field has something (lawyers, doctors, architects, and all sorts of engineering fields), so it’s not unusual. If anything, not having such a system is unusual.

@rlamacraft @elbeejay "Uncle" Robbert C Martin tried to do something like this.

I think one of the biggest problems there would be, would be the low barrier to entry. Anyone can learn enough online to make a simple web app and be dangerous. Those people far out weigh those of us who want to be rigorous in our software development.

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