alt Hacker NewsWeird. I call myself a developer because I don't have an engineering degree from an abet certified engineering program.
I recognize, in some capacity, that this isn't the norm and in the US "professional engineer" is protected and not simply "engineer", but it feels akin to stolen valor to me.
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I call myself a computer programmer unless someone is asking for my official job title (software engineer)
I call myself engineer because I have also an engineering degree.
But yeah, the term is mostly misused
I'm a software dev in the US and I never call myself "engineer" in that capacity. Always "programmer" or "developer".
I agree. Engineers have to clear a much higher bar. Even though my career was spent in medical diagnostic software where we had to get 510k clearance, I was still keenly aware that this was a fundamentally different activity from actual engineering.
If there were a license in the US for it, I’d agree with you. But as is, if you are “doing” engineering, you’re an engineer.
If you are a licensed engineer of some kind, you’d state that outright.
The equivalent of stolen valor would be claiming to be a licensed software engineer; except there is no such license so it would also be fraud, misrepresentation, etc.
(I know this is different elsewhere)