✧✦Catherine✦✧"are software engineers Real Engineers or not" is a pointless distraction. software engineers who don't know how to deal with guilt love to self-flagellate with it and other than that there's no basis in reality for that discourse. do something useful instead
nobody asks if electrical engineers are Real Engineers or not even though there's no licensing requirement for the vast majority of EE work and plenty of people do it quite successfully without so much as tertiary education
4censord 
@whitequark wait there is no licensing requirement for them where you are!?
Here in Germany, you need a "master" (not a masters degree, so not university!) To run an electricians shop. Its a 2 year (I think) class that you can do after and apprenticeship
Here in Germany, you need a "master" (not a masters degree, so not university!) To run an electricians shop. Its a 2 year (I think) class that you can do after and apprenticeship
@4censord electrical engineering != professional electrician, these are different occupations
the former designs your laptop or USB charger or (in comparatively rare cases) grid distribution systems
the latter does the wiring in your house
@whitequark oh
In German we call these Elektriker and Elektroniker respectively, which I've only seen both get translated to electrician
Good to know that difference does exist
@4censord there's a bit of ambiguity and regional variation in terminology, yeah! I'd expect different regional English variants to have similar differences too
R@whitequark @4censord even individual sub-areas (which can all be called "electrical engineering") are (or can be) culturally *very* different from each other, if you've been around enough
the "vast majority" of EE being "microelectronics widget designers" is quite recent (although long enough to make the claim "true")
compare and contrast, for example:
- consumer widgets
- "maker"
- electronic music
- electric machines
- industrial control systems
- signals and systems
where:
- might have EE academic credentials, but doesn't have to. probably embraces the label "engineer"
- probably doesn't have academic credentials (yet?). may or may not be intentionally (whether they know it or not) avoiding legacy gatekeeping culture
- a huge spectrum ranging from individual tinkerers who are more likely to have a _music_ background than EE, to the extensive effort put into "broadcast" and "live events"
- *very* very oldschool part of EE. their designs and schematics and such even _look_ different. much more likely to be working on something where licensing is important
- likewise, except it also includes what is essentially a divergent fork of computer science (but they themselves probably don't think about it this way)
- "ivory tower" academia work that is mostly "mathematics" more than anything (until you _really_ need it)