I have taken several software engineering courses at my university and I am a CS major. Our software engineering classes recently got rated second in the US with standford's program being at the top of the list. So I would consider myself knowledgable enough to be considered software engineer even though my actual field of study is CS.

NOTE - software engineering deals with design issues (lots of writting of documentation) and testing practices. If the person does not do this, they are not a software engineer.

Quote:Original post by Palidine
For fun, you should go over to the people in the hardware engineering department and ask them if either of them should even be called "engineers".

That's a good one ;)

Strictly speaking, neither of them can call themselves software engineers.

How about you toss them a banana and let them fight over who the code monkey is.

i went to dictionary.com and got this for "engineer":

To plan, construct, or manage.
To plan, manage, and put through by skillful acts or contrivance; maneuver.
1: a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

So if you do those things your an engineer. Whether your a custodial engineer(janitor), software engineer(programmer), or civil engineer.

Everyone from janitors to circus clowns are being called "engineers" these days so the old school engineers are getting kind of defensive about the title.

Quote:Original post by Shining Blue
i went to dictionary.com and got this for "engineer":

To plan, construct, or manage.
To plan, manage, and put through by skillful acts or contrivance; maneuver.
1: a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

So if you do those things your an engineer. Whether your a custodial engineer(janitor), software engineer(programmer), or civil engineer.

Everyone from janitors to circus clowns are being called "engineers" these days so the old school engineers are getting kind of defensive about the title.

Well the dictionary definition is nice but things don't kinda work that way in the real world.. In reality it really depends on which country you are in as to whether you can hold the title of an 'engineer' as well as depending on your academic qualifications..

I kno in some countries you need some kind of official qualification/certificate from either a royal charter or another professional body before you can call yourself or work as an 'engineer' (doing otherwise would be illigal and there can be very severe actions taken against you).. This is also the case for many other professions such as medicine, law and many more (although probably alot stricter with the others.. you can't claim to be a doctor unless you are qualified under a professional body, otherwise your not qualified as far as the state is concerned.. regardless of how many books u may have read..lol)

I personally don't see the point in having so many different titles to computation and IT degrees..

Granted some a widely different but some are so similar its a joke.. At my university I'm in my final yr studying Software Engineering and my friend takes literally ALL my modules (and has done for the last two yrs) yet he will graduate with a BSC while i'll graduate with an BEng..

So why does the difference of two or three modules in the space of a 3 yr degree course, warrant the need to have two seperate degree's in two seperate fields?

I mean where all gonna graduate and get the same jobs NEways so????

Its just mashed-up..

There seems to be too much focus on the person's formal education as opposed to *what* he is doing in his/her job. If you have a Computer Science degree and work on the shipping dock, you will probably have a title like Shipping Clerk because your job title is about your function in the company. You already have your degree (s) to describe the type of education you received. Please also consider that someone who can graduate with a Computer xxx degree or am xxx Engineering degree might be perfectly capable to come up to par on the "missing" software engineering skills they did not learn in school. If the company feels they function capably in their role as "Software Engineer" then that's a pretty good reason to stick them with that title. One other thought - if they hand you their business card and it says "Software Engineer" then you can make assumptions about the person's knowledge and capabilities. It doesn't really matter at that point in which order or what manner those abilities were acquired and put into practice.