Engineering (According to Wikipedia)
Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to solve technical problems, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve systems.
In short engineering is the ability to follow processes and measure things. Most developers I have worked with are incapable or unwilling to measure things (on any level), therefore they are incapable or unwilling to be engineers.
If you want better software set minimal, measurable, objective standards. That becomes your foundation, your law. It is as much a soft skill as a technical skill, which is explained just before halfway through the video. Software is very very bad at this and is almost entirely reliant upon compile checks to just magically set some implicit success criteria. Most developers will balk at the idea of a disciplined planned approach and just expect some abstraction to do it for them.
Once you have achieved the process you test for compliance and you measure the result. Testing for compliance isn't a manual QA effort or tiny test units. Its a total process, a certification that you are willing to bet your job and credibility upon. For software such discipline is often foreign. In other jobs like medicine, law, law enforcement, soldiering, and even truck driving getting this horribly wrong will terminate your career forever and can land you in jail or result in devastating civil suits.
Until software is willing to become an adult like those other professions this will remain a distant challenge and its a monumental drain on the resilience of those developers who try their best to achieve that disciplined intent.
Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to solve technical problems, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve systems.
In short engineering is the ability to follow processes and measure things. Most developers I have worked with are incapable or unwilling to measure things (on any level), therefore they are incapable or unwilling to be engineers.
If you want better software set minimal, measurable, objective standards. That becomes your foundation, your law. It is as much a soft skill as a technical skill, which is explained just before halfway through the video. Software is very very bad at this and is almost entirely reliant upon compile checks to just magically set some implicit success criteria. Most developers will balk at the idea of a disciplined planned approach and just expect some abstraction to do it for them.
Once you have achieved the process you test for compliance and you measure the result. Testing for compliance isn't a manual QA effort or tiny test units. Its a total process, a certification that you are willing to bet your job and credibility upon. For software such discipline is often foreign. In other jobs like medicine, law, law enforcement, soldiering, and even truck driving getting this horribly wrong will terminate your career forever and can land you in jail or result in devastating civil suits.
Until software is willing to become an adult like those other professions this will remain a distant challenge and its a monumental drain on the resilience of those developers who try their best to achieve that disciplined intent.