Tinder, a dating app, has recently updated its Terms of Service. Among minor bureaucratic modifications, one major change aims to battle impersonations. From now on, Tinder will ban web developers who claim to be 'engineers'. While backend- and other types of software developers seem to be unaffected, many believe the ToS will be amended soon to include those as well.
  • hansl@lemmy.world
    451·
    9 months ago

    It’s a good thing that Engineer is a protected profession and not everyone can claim it, like Lawyer or Doctor.

    In the US now it’s “oh you’re an engineer? Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?”

    • macaroni1556@lemmy.ca
      172·
      9 months ago

      I disagree, I believe the regulatory agencies do nothing in Canada to legitimize their claim to regulating software development. Heck, they do nothing for electronics or semiconductors or anything smaller than the power grid.

      • hansl@lemmy.world
        225·
        9 months ago

        Software development is done by developers. If you are a software engineer chances are you’re working on software infrastructure that actually apply at scales that are not “add a shopping cart to this blog”.

        There are reasons you ask a civil engineer for work.

        • macaroni1556@lemmy.ca
          13·
          9 months ago

          You missed my point that if professional engineering societies in Canada want to take ownership of software and electronics, they better do something and not just say they’re regulating it and sit on it with no clear definition for what it even is.

          If they were doing their job, we wouldn’t need to debate what a software engineer is. They’ve let us down and they’re getting away with it.

          • hansl@lemmy.world
            7·
            9 months ago

            They’re regulating engineering of software and electronics.

            From Engineers Canada;

            In the case of software engineering, a piece of software (or a software-intensive system) can therefore be considered an engineering work if both of the following conditions are true:

            • The development of the software required “the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.”

            • There is a reasonable expectation that failure or inappropriate functioning of the system would result in harm to life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare, or the natural environment.

            That does seem to me well defined. If you disagree then it’s okay.

            Edit: taken from this: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/public-policy/professional-practice-software-engineering-en.pdf which also add context.

            I cannot speak about electronics as my education was in software engineering.

            • macaroni1556@lemmy.ca
              71·
              9 months ago

              Not so much well defined as fancy words. There is no example of a paying software development job that has no economic impact if the software were to fail.

              If I ran a small shopify page for goat feed, I’d be an engineer for making sure the site stayed working so farmers could order their feed. It could even put lives at risk!

              It really only excludes someone privately working on a video game for fun.

              So given that, what are they actually regulating? What are they providing to their members to help them become better “software engineers”. I say it’s nothing at all? +