Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!mimsy!avi.umiacs.umd.edu!dalamb
From: dalamb@avi.umiacs.umd.edu (David Lamb)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Not engineers
Message-ID: <33185@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 18 Apr 91 12:54:48 GMT
References: <1991Apr17.144402.16637@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM>
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Reply-To: dalamb@umiacs.umd.edu (David Lamb)
Organization: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Lines: 36

In article <1991Apr17.144402.16637@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> jim@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM (Jim Nicholsen) writes:
>... The title
>"software engineer" was grabbed to add more prestige to those given the
>title. The debate on-going in the professional organizations concerning
>certification of those whoe wish to use the title has much more to do with
>perserving prestige as it does with "improving" the level of expertise.

My, aren't we cynical (and I do mean "we").  I think at least a few of
the people who coined the term "Software Engineering" (at the 1968
Nato conference, according to folklore) were holding it up as an ideal
to aspire to.  I've heard plenty of people say that the main activity
of most professional organizations is to protect the privileges of
their members.  Is there some way we can separate out expressions of
cynicism and despair from a discussion of what the profession ought to
be like?

>The problem, within firms whose product is software, is describing the
>job that each person is to do (from owner to person who looks after the
>building).

This I can agree with.  Metaphors I've heard are
    Movie industry (the article that started this thread?)
    Rhetoric (software as written communication)
    Programmer/S.Eng./Comp.Scientist as Technician/Electrical Engineer/Physicist
	(this one has been my favourite so far, but perhaps leads us too much
	 into questions of prestige)

Another observation that may not be too relevant, but struck me: the
book publishing trade doesn't appear to have "managers".  Instead
everybody is an "editor" of some kind.  I imagine they do much the
sort of thing that managers everywhere do, but at least the title
focuses on the job of getting books out, instead of some kind of
generic "management" divorced from what's being managed.
--

David Alex Lamb				internet: dalamb@umiacs.umd.edu