I have an engineering degree, but sofware dev that I do isn’t engineering. I think of myself more as a craftsman, or maybe a tradesman. I think ratcatching is disrespectful. You need real engineers, but you also need people who can put there hands in and actually build something…

One thing that is different about software is that I suspect anybody that would classify as “real engineers” (like sucessful applicants at amazon) would also be an extremely competent software developer. This is different, my dads a fine instruments maker (an extinct trade, he’d be lumped in with tool and die makers, now). Anyhow, he’s really, really good at making things. From scratch, sometimes that means making the tools he’ll need in order to make something. But, he’s not an engineer, and the engineers that come through his machine shops… not so good at actually making things (most of them, a few are brilliant).

So, software might be different in that the idea that one person does the math and draws the pictures, and somebody else comes along later and builds it doesn’t work so well with software.

Another thing. When encyclopedias first came out, the skilled crafts masters were concerned – anybody could just read things and learn how to do what they did (cast cannons, make paper, build houses, whatever). This is kind of vague, but one thing I like about software is that unlike quantum mechanics, which I also had to study, I learn something or read something about s/w, and I can sit down at my machine, and I can try it. I actually can learn from reading, because everything I need to experiment is available to me. Maybe that makes software a craft that I like, whereas the engineering, well, theoretically I can design a flat panel liquid crystal system powered off sunlight and good intent, but how can I build it in my basement?

To get back to the first encylopedias, the stuff taught in them that had never been written down before could also be learned by experimentation, people had tools, were used to doing things by hand, building there own houses, making shoes, etc. So an article about the secrets of shoe making, that really spread the knowledge. It doesn’t bother me that software developement is a craft. It does bother me that it isn’t taught like a craft. Learn the fundamentals. Learn all the tools, how they are built, when to use it, how to build your own when thats appropriate. Don’t stop learning, your degree makes you a journeyman, maybe, not a master.

Ok, back to bed.

Wrong. If you are thinking that you are an idiot.

I was with a buddy once and we hopped in his buddy’s car. I see an intro to Java book in his back seat. The conversation then went like this:

me: oh, you study programming
him: yeah, but I really hate that class. Learning about arrays and that stuff.
him: …
him: I’ll never use that in real life, right?
me: actually, I use arrays every single day
him: …

My coding background made taking the CS courses much easier, and I gained more from them.

Nurse Practitioners and Nurse Anesthetists earn even more than RN’s do.

But it’s very physically demanding.

One of the best programmers I know never went to college at all; he just started playing with VB right out of high school, got a job, and learned as he went along.

A few of my professors were absolutely brilliant computer scientists with little to no real-world software development chops. We learned a lot about a lot of interesting things, but we never covered important real-world basics, simply because the teachers didn’t know about them.

The way I look at it, electrical engineers don’t really need to know all the finer points of quantum mechanics, but they’d better know enough to understand how electrons behave. By the same token, not every programmer needs to be able to prove abstract theorems about Turing Completeness, but they should know enough to “get” what’s going on.

Like Joel Spolsky and others have suggested, I think we (read: society) really need a BFA in programming that covers what you really need to know, without glossing over the niggly bits. Make them keep their code in CVS. Make them take and file bug reports. Have them build something in Flash, something in C++, something in ADA, something in Java, and then make them extend and change those programs the next year, once they’ve forgotten everything. The year after that, they have to adapt someone else’s first-year code, and that someone else has to answer their questions while doing a project of their own. That’s what real life is like, and until you’ve felt the pain of your own crappy decisions, you can’t really consider yourself a competent developer. (Come to think of it, maybe it should be a Masters program.)