<story><title>Internal Combustion Engine</title><url>https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>worewood</author><text>&amp;gt; makes me a little ashamed to use the word &amp;quot;engineer&amp;quot; in my title of &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot; these days.&lt;p&gt;But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy commented too, or maybe a 3D game with tricks like that of John Carmack. Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.&lt;p&gt;To make an analogy: in the physical world there are the engineers, and the mechanics.&lt;p&gt;In the software world everybody is a software engineer.</text></item><item><author>alanbernstein</author><text>A few thoughts while reading this:&lt;p&gt;In addition to a deeper understanding of engine &lt;i&gt;manufacturing considerations&lt;/i&gt; than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work.&lt;p&gt;The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word &amp;quot;engineer&amp;quot; in my title of &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.&lt;p&gt;And then I skimmed the source, and it makes me think the author deserves that title. It also validates my belief in vanilla javascript.&lt;p&gt;edit: And later it occurs to me that Mr. Ciechanowski is a true craftsman of software; handmade and built to 1) Be beautiful (and informative), 2) last for years. (The open web standards are the ones that seem to stick around the longest, for better or for worse. (I&amp;#x27;m ignorant of the shader world though))</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zikzak</author><text>When I took &amp;quot;Software Engineering&amp;quot; in University, the prof was very careful to explain in great detail, and frequently, that the field was not mature enough to really be called engineering. Then he would talk at length about things like software for airplanes and spacecraft. It is impossible to call yourself an engineer while looking someone in the eye after taking his class. I am a software developer. Maybe an analyst. But mostly a developer.</text></comment>
<story><title>Internal Combustion Engine</title><url>https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>worewood</author><text>&amp;gt; makes me a little ashamed to use the word &amp;quot;engineer&amp;quot; in my title of &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot; these days.&lt;p&gt;But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy commented too, or maybe a 3D game with tricks like that of John Carmack. Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.&lt;p&gt;To make an analogy: in the physical world there are the engineers, and the mechanics.&lt;p&gt;In the software world everybody is a software engineer.</text></item><item><author>alanbernstein</author><text>A few thoughts while reading this:&lt;p&gt;In addition to a deeper understanding of engine &lt;i&gt;manufacturing considerations&lt;/i&gt; than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work.&lt;p&gt;The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word &amp;quot;engineer&amp;quot; in my title of &amp;quot;software engineer&amp;quot;. There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.&lt;p&gt;And then I skimmed the source, and it makes me think the author deserves that title. It also validates my belief in vanilla javascript.&lt;p&gt;edit: And later it occurs to me that Mr. Ciechanowski is a true craftsman of software; handmade and built to 1) Be beautiful (and informative), 2) last for years. (The open web standards are the ones that seem to stick around the longest, for better or for worse. (I&amp;#x27;m ignorant of the shader world though))</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kortilla</author><text>&amp;gt; Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.&lt;p&gt;From a complexity perspective an ICU isn’t nearly as complex as even something as simple is a script scraping a webpages for links and queuing them up for further crawling. I’m not sure if “complex” is the word you are going for but even the TCP state machine has significantly more complexity than an ICU and that’s just a fragment of what it takes to transmit some data.&lt;p&gt;The composability and abstractions we have in this industry allows you to quickly dwarf any regular mechanical system. There is a reason this is a whole new era beyond the industrial revolution.</text></comment>