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Software Engineer vs Software Developer (programming.dev)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by fogetaboutit@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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In your opinion what's the difference between the two? In my opinion both terms are frequently used interchangeably in the workplace.

But I'd like to consider myself as an engineer, because although I don't consider myself to be good at it, I think I cares about the software that I worked on, its interaction with other services, the big picture, and different kinds of small optimizations.

I mean, what is even engineering?

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[–] betz24@lemmynsfw.com -5 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I typically tell people that engineering is applying physics. If you aren't directly interacting with the physical world, you are most likely a developer.

Working on an app, no matter how complex (or unessarily convoluted) generally makes you a developer. If you aren't thinking about impact of clock cycles, actuation/hardware interfaces or sensing, there is a high chance that the work you do has little to no risk or a chance of failure that is governed by the physical world. As said in other comments, engineers design and sign off on things. There is an implication that there is an unknown constraint, unlike a fully observable software environment.

[–] ShrimpsIsBugs@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago

By that definition almost all people who call themselves software engineers would be wrong. That doesn't automatically mean, you're wrong though.

Personally, I disagree with your definition of software engineers needing to directly interact with hardware stuff in order to be engineers. Wikipedia defines software engineering as

the application of systematic desciplined, quantifiable approach to development, operation and maintenance of software and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering and computer science to software.

So it's all about the systematic approach to complex systems, not about whether or not you directly interact with hardware interfaces.

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