[closewith]

> And it's not just this surveillance law that depresses me, reading up on the cyber resilience act just feels to me like it will suck even more fun out of software development, at least in a professional context.

God forbid people who love to use the title engineer will have to apply the rigour and standards of actual engineering to the work they do.

[goodpoint]

And be held responsible when implementing spyware, tracking and emission defeat devices?

That would be the day HN starts a revolt.

[IYasha]

I had a horror of meeting some. Those can be, basically, put into two categories: 1) completely brainwashed (engineers aren't immune to that, unfortuntely), 2) drowning in regret and alcohol (being hostages of the situation).

[pmontra]

Or get a degree in engineering.

[api]

If software dev had been licensed and regulated this way we’d have only a tiny fraction of what we have now in terms of languages, OSes, tooling, etc.

There are specific areas where it makes sense but doing it broadly will just halt all innovation.

[pmontra]

Two notes about that.

1) There are a lot of people doing engineering without a degree. One example: many makers are not engineers and they do a lot of good stuff anyway. What they don't do is taking legal responsibility because they are not allowed to. It's no warranty / no fitness for a purpose stuff. Similarly there is a lot of software with no warranty / no fitness clauses. History demonstrated that it's good enough to keep the world spinning.

2) Most people in the software industry do engineering jobs no matter if they have a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering (I didn't check the USA name for that, sorry) or in anything else. I know very good software developers, maybe with an architect / engineer job title, with no degree at all or with a degree in Graphic Design or Philosophy or Agronomy. They moved to software development because they tinkered with their computers, wrote some programs and discovered that they are good at it. Nobody notices the difference after 5 or 10 years of work. The only downside it's a little narrowness of expertise: they have many more unknown unknowns because nobody systematically told them what's there outside and how it works, even at high level. One example: that good software developer with the Graphic Design degree told me once that he doesn't really know how networking works. To him it's the configuration screen of his Mac and HTTP calls from Node.js.

[goodpoint]

> If software dev had been licensed and regulated this way we’d have only a tiny fraction of what we have now in terms of languages, OSes, tooling, etc.

It's starting to sound like a very good idea.

> There are specific areas where it makes sense but doing it broadly will just halt all innovation.

Or speed it by focusing efforts on well designed software.

[anthk]

Yea, like the Windows 9x days. The best days ever, for sure. The best days for a fucking disaster and a collapse of the Western economy in a matter of days if you suggested that turd.

[goodpoint]

I'm not sure this kind of comment adds to the conversation in any meaningful way.

[anthk]

Neither does making all "uncertified" software illegal. That' s against the whole idea of free as in freedom software.

And thanks to that software we are talking seamlessly over the net.

[OJFord]

An unlettered colleague 'engineer' doesn't really bother me, but my electricity supplier or dishwasher manufacturer sending one out...