Never try to undervalue. Programmers Vs Engineers

This article is an answer to The Atlantic’s write up Programmers: Stop Calling Yourself Engineers. Starting with the tone and Screenplay that he presented with his tired friend the author looks completely prejudices with engineering definitions and I suggest him to look overhead and be optimistic here. I am not writing to bully him or I being argumentative to him but simply the friction that he has created in me after reading his article. Again I will be opinionated and it is going to be too long to read. Hope you adjudge it better.

According to the author, the real engineers are mechanical and civil engineers who build bridges, artifacts design cars etc. I say, these are the parents for all the divided branches of engineering. Clearly, by engineering, I understand that one who works for the novelty of society unselfishly. Right, was in the same way but thinking this even today will prove and suggest you impractical and of stereotypic mindset. Because the divided branches are Electrical which is also a core branch and author has never shown any courtesy to them. Later electronics came then Computer Science was born. Considering all this fact, today I must say every branch is equivalent in its own way. Either of them cannot be targeted or marginalized. But if I think critically Computer Science will seem to be ruling this world today. Because engineering drawing, design everything has gone digital. Gone are the days where author talks, when you hold a pencil to sketch. In this game-changing era where nobody has got time to think even, how can you think to delay a project by a situation? Else will come and get away with your pencil handwriting.

It’s the code that has the power to transform any lively problem to be correlated in terms of a program just to comfort the users and use the skills tactfully. I am talking CAD/CAM that they are using to design anything either a bridge, monument or anything. It’s nothing but a vast collection of separate packages developed by MATLAB. Considering the size, it can count up to 10,000 continuous pages of photographs. So if you’re thinking to get a book instead of this software you will be spending all the days and nights in flipping the pages only. Not my fault!!

Next, the author criticizes how the Software engineering is against the title. Here actually I would participate and ask to share a handshake with him. Because see Software Engineering has yet not been considered a subject for engineering by many. Even Knuth disregards it by saying that it’s wasteful and poor to see it be implemented. But not everywhere, Software is not a product that we will be manufacturing, it’s like a service that we are offering to our client. Talking of bugs and errors, it’s not weird but also disgusting because testing goes everywhere. And no test is guaranteed to be same and right by any other tester. The latest bug that is being detected in UPI caused a lot of revenue loss to the bank. But yet we can minimize the loss if had been responded early. The fault in NASA mission conveys the same story but only blaming the software engineering is not right.

Talking of security breach, not a single body in this era is secure on the internet and nothing shall be believed to be virus free or not been affected by the cyber issues. But there are some things you can do to get yourself protected or being tracked from them. See if there is a problem, we seek a solution to it. Not even this for all the possible solutions, we try to find the mostl optimized thing to be implemented. We developed encryption, what if someone else spent his days and night for years in breaking them without coming to our notice.

My write up till above doesn’t mean that I am stepping back after giving excuses to every problem but I want to attract everyone’s attention to how things are working in it. If we have cyber breaches then we also have hackers, for every bug we have debuggers and testers also. We as an engineering helping everyone to cozy their lives, we are making everyone lazy, so lazy. Otherwise, what was the essence of building a self-driving car, automatic car parking and self-going wheelchair? These are the recent projects but we have done much in the past also. We created interfaces for mobiles, desktops and everything. We designed and built the tool where we write and publish these articles and books (Word and LATEX). Now if author excuses of delay caused then he should also consider the method of recovery, cost effectiveness and comfort that he felt.

He talks that cloud computing is not an engineered product as it has been outsourced from others. Yes, of course, if outsourcing has not been possible we would not be able to provide you better networks, computation speed, bandwidth and biggest of all internet. Just tell me even if there is not limit on the number of servers that can be placed in a data center still, the problem persists if delay been caused to us, we will not be able to fetch data o other parts of the world. Not even this the biggest network providing company CISCO is also nothing for the author. Why still it’s the oldest company after IBM. If we stop calling ourselves engineers who will connect you from the internet next to you.

Coding is a superpower. With it, you can bend reality to your will. You can make the world a better place. Or you can destroy it.

Talking to data which is not the new concept but from last decade we have realized its essence. Today quadrillions of data pass through the internet. Now managing it round the clock is not engineering? This so much of data where would you store? Who designing the architecture and framework for storage. If were not present or we stop calling ourselves programmers would you be able to take a single slice of data for yourself on own? Today we must realize the cost and value of data. If we will not do this CIA will continue to haunt us and facebook and google will continue to sell our privacy. Yes. It’s we are doing the engineers. Former is observing us while latter have gone blind with business ideology. Yes, that’s where ethics come.

only YOU can prevent evil code

Talking for uber, taxi was fairly good in those days. But just consider those old days when you have to wait for hours on the stand and later have to pay a crack of money. After coding up and wrapping it upto a piece of software, precisely a mobile app gives the power in hands of the rider to get a ride as his own choice. Again don’t forget the power of code. It’s the code that has boomed the business and closed also. It’s the code that startups are using to bypass laws and all. SO don’t underestimate it and us as well.