Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!super!pcolsen
From: pcolsen@super.ORG (Peter C Olsen)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Programmer Licensing?
Keywords: software safety, government regulation
Message-ID: <16840@super.ORG>
Date: 18 Nov 89 02:31:04 GMT
References: <39400056@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <242@cherry5.UUCP> <4600@ae.sei.cmu.edu> <1487@redsox.bsw.com>
Sender: news@super.ORG
Reply-To: pcolsen@super.UUCP (Peter C Olsen)
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie, Md.
Lines: 48

In article <1487@redsox.bsw.com> campbell@redsox.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
>In article <4600@ae.sei.cmu.edu> rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) writes:
>... Doctors, dentists, lawyers, electricians, beauticians -- all
>provide services to individuals who could be injured, or even killed, by an
>incompetent practitioner.

How does the practice of a civil engineer engaged in the structural design
of a bridge differ from the practice of a software engineer engaged
in the design of software for the automatic operation of bridge control?

How does the responsibility of an electrician installing and maintaining
an elevator differ from that of the programmer who programs the 
controlling software?

To ``practice engineering before the public'' requires, in most states,
that you be registered as a Professional Engineer.  ``Practicing before
the public'' means offering services the the public at large, not
as an employee.  (The ``public'' of course includes even the largest
corporations.)  The rationale is {\em precisely} to protect unknowing
consumers from being defrauded by incompetents ... and perhaps killed.

I think that the same problems arise in software engineering.  A 
``programmer'' who writes a check-book program can probably escape
both legal and moral liability with a shrink-wrap release --- people
who cannot balance their checkbook by hand (or at least understand 
how it is done) probably cannot be harmed any more by their 
software than by their pocket calculators.

I don't think that this is the case in the ``software engineering'' of 
large, complex, or critical systems.  If you hire me to custom-build
some sotware for your medical system, your environmental control system, 
or your custom boat, then you may well be entrusting your life to me ---
and you have the {\em right} to expect the same professional standards
in software engineering that you would expect in civil, electrical, or
chemical engineering --- or medicine.  Chief among these is a broad
knowledge of the basic engineering principles which underlie {\em all}
engineering --- including software engineering --- and which are
often completely ignored in the typical CS curriculum followed by many
``programmers.''

Put another way, physicist are wonderful people, but I still prefer
my bridges designed by civil engineers.

The bottom line --- you can be a ``programmer'' all you want, but 
if you want to be an ``engineer'' then either be an employee or 
Register before you enter public practice.

Peter Olsen P.E.   pcolsen@super.org