tautologico
✧✦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
Andrew Zonenberg@whitequark i know an electrical engineering PE but generally that sort of licensing is only needed for like grid scale distribution work
@whitequark like if your system failing can knock out power to a major city they'll probably want whoever designs it to be a PE
@azonenberg yes, hence "vast majority". there are specific subfields of EE which do require licensing, but they're the exception, not the rule. nobody's ever claimed that the guy who designed your shitty USB-C charger isn't a "Real Engineer" no matter the amount of incompetence that goes it!
Leo@ALLES@whitequark @azonenberg Fascinating - here in Germany, you're technically not even allowed to swap a light without a license and a company with liability insurance.
Yann Sionneau@leoluk @whitequark @azonenberg in a professional context it's the same in France, but at home obviously you do what you want.
Emil J@leoluk @whitequark @azonenberg home electrical installations is different, but you can be employed or contracted as an electronics designer without a license or professional association membership, right?
@the_art_of_giving_up yes, that's all unlicensed
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)
Attila Kinali@4censord @whitequark In German there are three categories: Elektriker, Elektroniker and Elektroingenieur. All three are different, have different education and have different regulatory requirements. Catherine is talking about "Elektroingenieur"
Russ Garrett@whitequark @4censord but in fact you don't need any formal certification to be a commercial electrician in the UK - the law focuses on "competence" and doesn't specify where that competence comes from, though insurers might. (There is a qualification scheme for domestic electricians.)
groff 🇺🇦You don't need to be qualified to work on a car's critical safety features, ie brakes, either. Just follow a youtube video then hurtle down the motorway at 70mph.
But, with electrics, you can't do work that needs certifying without jumping through hoops, getting it inspected by building control.
So new fuseboard, work in areas with extra risk, etc.
And any electrical work done by anyone needs to comply with BS7671:2018 and amendments, a 600+ page large book.
@geoffl @whitequark @4censord there are no building regulations for electrical installations in commercial premises - it's covered by health and safety law.
Yvan@russss this kinda works out as being regulated in practice though?
Building Control wouldn't sign off on pub rennovation work without an installation certificate from an electrician.
And for the warehouse the fire department required us to show them an EICR (IIRC it was a 5-yearly requirement).
@yvan yeah, but there's nothing in law which says you have to be qualified to issue a commercial EIC/EICR either! But if you're doing that you're probably going to want to be insured and the insurer might have their own requirements.
@geoffl @russss insurance is always easy to get on paper... agree to the terms, pay the money... it's when shit goes wrong that the problems occur!
I did for a while a year or so ago consider doing one of those electirican crash-courses for the bit of paper, so called "qualification"... and to have a shot at getting into electrician work. Fairly confident I'm at least as competent as 80% of the experienced sparkies I've dealt with. There are some real shockers out there! (Pun not initially intended, but I liked it... lol.)
@russss no, and we did skirt around things a bit here and there... comfortable in our own competence (and where I was comfortable I could justify it), but then having a professional EICR done where that was required.
Similar situation to the PAT testing too of course. Always did that "in house".
But I suspect in both the BC and FD cases if I'd supplied Building Control or the Fire guys with an EIRC I'd done myself I'd have had a hard time convincing them. The Norfolk fire department were particularly detailed, but also pretty friendly and flexible.
And yeah, then there's also the insurance.
As a user of this sytem it feels "de facto" regulated, whilst not actually regulated.
@yvan @russss @whitequark @4censord
Yep, EICR is 5 yearly. And your insurance company might insist on Minor Works Certificates or Electrical Installation Certificates for any changes.
But you only need to be competent to do that. And i've encountered enough Nappit and EIC registered sparks who are far from.
@yvan @russss @geoffl @whitequark @4censord
i do know some hackspace and/or heritage railway people who have managed to do work such as adding a new circuit for an IEC 60309 socket, without being a formally-registered electrician ("catgirl/catenby who has studied the relevant regulations and knows how to do paperwork" was competent enough for their insurer)
also known some people in similar situations where the insurer wasn't as chill
crzwdjk ✅ @russss @whitequark @4censord That's fascinating, where I live electricians have to be certified by what amounts to the electricians' guild and to do that you have to work under a certified electrician for 2 years.
@crzwdjk @whitequark @4censord and yet the UK is considered one of the best countries in the world for electrical safety! I still don't entirely understand why, but strict qualification regimes definitely aren't the reason here.
@russss @whitequark @4censord Maybe it's better standards so it's harder to screw it up? Stuff like fused plugs and the like, I assume the approach to earth fault protection is better than in the US, etc.
@whitequark @russss @4censord if you grab a NEMA plug wrong you get a 110 volt tingle because it's absolutely normal for the blades lf the plug to be exposed while still live so the British standards are slightly better than that. Also extension cords where the only overcurrent protection is the cord melting, and the only solution to this is to demand more closely spaced outlets to discourage use of extension cords.
@whitequark @russss @4censord In conclusion everything sucks, but also more research is warranted on what actually contributes to good electrical safety outcomes in practice.
@crzwdjk @whitequark @4censord the plugs are only fused because of our weird ring main wiring system, it doesn't add any additional safety over a radial circuit with an unfused plug. And sometimes it's annoying.
The UK is fairly good at keeping track of trends in electrical safety incidents and updating regulations to deal with them (since 1882!) but I think the UK was actually quite late in mandating RCD/GFCIs.
Pim de Groot@whitequark practically it's more of a mindset than an actual title.
But sometimes it's fun to tease software friends and certain types of people with "Ah, but I have an actual engineering title"
Pianosaurus 🕴@whitequark It always felt weird to me that I can design a product - power supply and all - then buy it in a shop and not be allowed to connect it to the grid in my home because *screwing it in* requires a licence. I mean, I understand why, but it *feels* off.
AstraLuma@whitequark i can do both
@astraluma yes, but I'd prefer it if you stuck to the latter!
@whitequark well, mostly at the moment i'm squinting at code and going "this has the wrong aesthetics"
which is definitely not Useful:tm:
@astraluma I'm quite fond of seeing code as an art form that deserves consideration from an aesthetic angle! can't let EEs have all of the artwork to them can I
@whitequark yeah, but it's not going to help me ship this tool, and it's only going to somewhat improve maintainability.
it just Feels Wrong and despite my vast command of this language and its frameworks, I'm at a loss as to how to adequately remedy it.
niconiconi@whitequark It's messy. I think the debate is threefold, the first PoV is about the professional qualification, the second PoV is a criticism of software risk management and reliability ("is it really engineering if developers can't be sanctioned for bugs?"), and the third is about whether software development is mature enough to be considered an engineering field. I think many commentators (Alan Kay? Gerald Sussman?) once said software development is still in the pre-engineering era. I think PoV #2 and #3 are legitimate discussions (and we also have people who use PoV #3 and PoV #2 to justify PoV #1...)
Lynn@whitequark It's just so exhausting. I get where it's coming from sometimes, but I really don't think constantly insisting that software is too much of a joke for programming to count as Real Engineering is somehow going to *improve* the state of the field
@whitequark this is a great series of blog posts where the author actually talks to a bunch of people who switched to software from other engineering fields and concludes that software engineering is in fact engineering:
Are We Really Engineers?
This is part one of the Crossover Project. Part two is here and part three is here. A conference talk based on this work is now available here. I sat in front of Mat, idly chatting about tech and cuisine. Before now, I had known him mostly for his cooking pictures on Twitter, the kind that made me envious of suburbanites and their 75,000 BTU woks. But now he was the test subject for my new project, to see if it was going to be fruitful or a waste of time.
@russss yep! it is one of the things that resulted in me forming this belief
Pxl Phile@russss @whitequark thanks for sharing. This is an exquisite read for so many reasons. 🙏🏾