[exclusiv]

> This is why programmers are not licensed engineers, and I have my doubts about being a serious engineering profession.

You're conflating two different things.

Coding and programming does not make one an engineer. Just like assembling a bridge does not make one an engineer. Or building a house, an architect.

On the other hand, actual software engineering can be a serious engineering profession. As serious as any other engineering form.

[almostnormal]

Bridges don't usually fail because some worker layered some reinforcement wrong before covering it in concrete, but by issues on the engineering side.

Some software issues are caused by engineering, but most of them are just some implementation detail like an "!" in the wrong place.

[exclusiv]

> Some software issues are caused by engineering, but most of them are just some implementation detail like an "!" in the wrong place.

Yes most of them (by the numbers) because software is more complicated than a bridge which has been a solved problem for a long time and because even the worker bees that write code have a more serious relationship with the software than someone pouring concrete in construction, which is also already a solved problem and for the most part - has one true way to do it, unlike software.

If you have proper quality control and budgets for that, then we'd have a lot less bugs that you are talking about. I don't get your point though.

You are saying software is so easy it's not real engineering and software fails because some coder screwed up? I don't buy that.

The success of every project comes down to quality engineering which encompasses a lot of things that are outside of just the part of the job called coding (budget, schedule, requirements gathering, build, quality control, risk mitigation, redundancy, ongoing monitoring, hosting/infrastructure, maintenance, etc).

A civil engineer is more of an engineer than a coder (which isn't an engineer) which is the conflation that caused my prior post.

However, a civil engineer is NOT more of an engineer than a real software engineer. I'd submit the opposite and the market agrees.

And if you don't believe that then you will eventually when there are more catastrophic failures in critical software. Probably AI or self driving cars when the stakes are higher. If it's a dumb bug as you allude to, that won't make it less of an engineering discipline. It would make it more.

I can't even believe there is debate about software engineering being a thing with all the incredible things that have been built.