If you’re a software engineer, you’re applying an engineering process to the field of software development. Adding a shopping cart to a blog can be a perfectly sound solution to the problem at hand.

Engineering becomes more important at scale, but scale itself doesn’t define engineering.

[–] hansl@lemmy.world -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That’s missing the point. Engineers perform at a specific level. You don’t expect civil engineers to build the bridge. Can they do it? Sure. But that’s not the profession. Same with Structural Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Industrial Engineers, etc. They are at a higher level in the planification and execution process and will likely have signatory responsibilities on the project. If the bridge falls, the engineer does have explaining to do.

The equivalent for a software engineer would be (in the US) more at the level of architect with responsibilities higher than developers.

But engineers is not a protected term so everyone is an engineer now.

[–] UnityDevice@startrek.website 2 points 8 months ago

That's a very arbitrary delineation that just seems to be something you worked out backwards to support your claim. I'm an EE and software developer and I sometimes do projects involving both fields (which would be computer engineering, I guess), and there's really not that much difference. I certainly don't see why I would label half of it engineering and the other half not.