[SystemSafety] State of the art for "safe Linux"

[Steve Tockey]

Derek,
I have long used the analogy that Software Engineering relates to Computer Science in the same way that Chemical Engineering relates to Chemistry as a science. The science branch is about understanding more about the universe that we live in—learning. The engineering brach is about applying what we know to solving—economically—real world problems. Just as it would not make any sense whatsoever to send a Chemist (in the US English sense of the word, not the UK English sense of the word which we would call a “pharmacist”) to save a Chemical Engineering problem, it would not make any sense whatsoever to send a Computer Scientist (at best, mind you) to solve a Software Engineering problem. People seem to be unable to grok the concept that Computer Science and Software Engineering are actually quite different (albeit related) things.

From your response below, it appears you agree that what is happening in practice is decidedly NOT actual engineering of software. So wouldn’t it make sense, then, to stop perpetuating the myth that it is by soundly rejecting their misuse of the title “software engineer”?


— steve



On Aug 9, 2024, at 12:14 PM, Derek M Jones <derek at knosof.co.uk> wrote:



On 09/08/2024 19:31, Steve,

> The American Engineer’s Council for Professional Development no longer exists. It has not existed since 1980. In fact, it is now known as the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET), see https://www.abet.org/about-abet/history/.

Thanks for the correction.  I made the mistake of
quoting from the Wikipedia article on Engineering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering

> So first, I take great exception to your assertion of
> “minuscule amounts of scientific principles”
>> Aside from the fact that Computer Science as a field of study is itself non-trivial:

I am describing a subfield of computing, not the entire field.

"Software engineering involves lots of creative application
of minuscule amounts of scientific principles.

> — data structures and algorithms

There is certainly lots of science known about algorithms.

> true Software Engineering also depends greatly on Discrete Mathematics:

In the sense that it also depends on nutrition to keep developers
alive and oxygen in the atmosphere.
There is a school of thought that software is all about mathematics,
and another that it is all about human processes.  Something to
discuss another time.

> Second, a key word in the ABET definition is “economically”. The true engineer strives to create solutions to real-world problems that are the cost-effective. This involves knowledge and application of Engineering Economy concepts such as:

When I tell cs academics that they should be teaching students
about economics, they either laugh or claim that they are teaching
it though [insert some obtuse rationale].

> I posit that the vast majority of those so-called “software engineers” couldn’t even define the term “Internal Rate of Return” to save their life let alone know how to calculate one or understand how to use it to make an actual engineering decision.

It's worse than that.  They would probably tell you that it's
a pointless issue, because they have zero interest in the financial
side of things.

-- 
Derek M. Jones           Evidence-based software engineering
blog:https://shape-of-code.com