Talk:Software engineering

POV in lead

The term software engineer is used very liberally in the corporate world. Very few of the practicing software engineers actually hold Software Engineering degrees from accredited universities. In fact, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, "most people who now function in the U.S. as serious software engineers have degrees in computer science, not in software engineering".

This passage seems to carry an implication that software engineering is not an academically vetted title. The provided quotation is used to imply that software engineers are not trained as such; however, it is merely providing a statistical fact, that most software engineers are CS graduates. However, many CS curricula offer or require software engineering tracks -- the source states this. This is akin to saying that most AI researchers aren't "AI degree" holders, as I have yet to hear of any such thing. I think it would more true to say that most schools don't offer software engineering degrees because most don't consider it to be separate from computer science. Since I consider the above passage to be a plainly POV interpretation with selective quoting, I am removing the statement and will replace it with a more neutral one. Ham Pastrami (talk) 05:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is a full paragraph from the source, emphasis mine:

Most people who now function in the U.S. as serious software engineers have degrees in computer science, not in software engineering. In large part this is because computer degrees have been widely available for more than 30 years and software engineering degrees have not. Positions that require development of large software systems often list “Software Engineer” as the position title. Graduates of computer science, computer engineering, and software engineering programs are good candidates for those positions, with the amount of software engineering study in the programs determining the suitability of that graduate for such a position.

Ham Pastrami (talk) 05:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Category box not appearing

Does anyone know why the Category box isn't showing up? The text is there, but not the usual outline and shading that usually goes along with it. Ham Pastrami (talk) 19:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC) Never mind, looks like it was a problem with the Foundation's advertising banner. Ham Pastrami (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Not Engineers

I see that there is a discussion of this subject in the article. I just want to weigh in that programmers are not engineers because they do not work with physics. All engineering disciplines work with physics, such as kinematics, thermodynamics, or electromagnetics. The naming of this article, as opposed to it simply being a redirect to programmer, is propagating this misuse of the term engineer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.89.174 (talk) 15:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

With this definition, is it even possible to have a Software "Engineering" discipline or title. It is a stretch to say that Software Engineers use physics (or an understanding of physics) in their daily activities to develop software. Granted, the more a software developer gets into electronics, you could argue that they are an engineer, but... Maybe they ought to call it "Firmware Engineering".  :) Srfleckenstein (talk) 13:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)