Originally posted by: gamepad
Is the software engineer sort of a leader of a team of programmers?
Originally posted by: tfinch2
Software Engineer is involved in the entire software process from design, requirements gathering, interface control, development, test (maybe), etc.
Programmers usually just write code.
Originally posted by: ahurtt
So short answer to your question: Yes.
Originally posted by: gamepad
Do software engineers require different schooling than programmers?
Originally posted by: mlm
One of my professors was telling us that software engineers are coming under fire (at least in Texas) because of the use of the word "engineer." In order to legally use the title, you have to be a licensed engineer.
Has anybody run into this?
Originally posted by: mlm
One of my professors was telling us that software engineers are coming under fire (at least in Texas) because of the use of the word "engineer." In order to legally use the title, you have to be a licensed engineer.
Has anybody run into this?
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Originally posted by: gamepad
Do software engineers require different schooling than programmers?
Would both be Computer Science? (My CS major has a degree plan option that focuses on Software Engineering, amongst other things) or do some universities have software engineering as a major? Two of the universities that I have attended do not offer that as a major, but rather as a subset of CS.
Originally posted by: Reel
Originally posted by: mlm
One of my professors was telling us that software engineers are coming under fire (at least in Texas) because of the use of the word "engineer." In order to legally use the title, you have to be a licensed engineer.
Has anybody run into this?
Licensed engineer as in PE exam? To sit for the exam sequence, you need an engineering degree from an ABET university. If you choose not to pursue the PE, you can still be a degreed engineer, just not a licensed engineer. Licensing just grants additional legal responsibilities in the engineering process above and beyond the standard engineering process.
If Texas only considers people licensed with the PE an engineer, what do they call all the engineers who have recently graduated and have no intention of taking the exam or have only passed the fundamentals exam?
Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Wow about the Texas Engineering thing.... I was thinking about moving to Austin to find a job when i graduate next year with my BS in EE and i too do not plan on getting a PE. You bet i would be pissed if i can't call my self an engineer after taking the classes i've taken and sacrificed five years of studying my ass off.
Originally posted by: Markbnj
I don't think there is currently a formal distinction, to be frank. Neither are CS-related careers. In fact I don't think these two terms apply to different types of careers. "Programmer" is what we called ourselves ten or fifteen years ago in a much simpler world. The idea of the "Software Engineer" is meant to imply a more disciplined, process-oriented, predictable, and controllable approach to delivering a specific set of features on time and on budget. It's an aspirational term even today, as anyone who works in the business knows. The evolution of the formality in the trade is not different from what has gone on in every other technical trade that emerged out of crude innovations: aeronautics, mechanical engineering, botany, etc.
A software architect (my job, for the most part) is responsible for the overall logical and physical structure of a system, including the scope and quality of the interfaces to the system (if not their actual implementations), and collaborates with analysts and customers to understand the translation of the requirements into functional reality.
Computer scientists are a different breed, whose utility I, as a mortal, am not able to judge. I don't hire them to do web apps, though.
Originally posted by: Modelworks
To muddy the water even more.
I'm an electrical engineer with programming skills for programming embedded microprocessors.
so I guess that makes me an engineering programmer ?
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Originally posted by: gamepad
Do software engineers require different schooling than programmers?
Would both be Computer Science? (My CS major has a degree plan option that focuses on Software Engineering, amongst other things) or do some universities have software engineering as a major? Two of the universities that I have attended do not offer that as a major, but rather as a subset of CS.