Is Software Engineering Real Engineering?
summary
Interviews total 12 hours with 17 crossovers across six engineering disciplines and 15 of 17 answer yes: software counts as engineering. Findings: software and traditional fields share iterative, unpredictable work; they differ in extreme iteration speed, consistency, and physical constraints. Concrete examples include hardware parts shortage reshaping designs, on-site oil rig hacks, and the 737 Max software patching a late aerodynamic change that later failed. A key actionable takeaway is version control and CI as transferrable tooling that materially improves other engineering workflows.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:40Is software development a branch of engineering?
- 3:39Let's talk to engineers
- 4:083 questions
- 5:06First Q: Are we really engineers?
- 15:29Second Q: How similar are we to traditional engineering?
- 30:36Third Q: What can we learn from each other?
- 32:33What can we teach?
- 34:17Version control
- 35:32Conclusion
- 36:46Outro
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