Should engineers be licensed (Was "Geeks")

From: CLeyson_at_aol.com <(CLeyson_at_aol.com)>
Date: Sat Dec 15 04:05:58 2001

On Sat 15 Dec 2001, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:

> There's a big difference between writing code to solve problems and being
> a software engineer. Designing, coding, and compiling is only 40% of the
> battle. Hopefully you're also spending some time planning and testing.

The company I work for seem to have forgotten the planning and testing part
of the software design process. We had a lot of embedded software written by
outside contractors for a 486 running QNX real time OS. Over the years the
software has evolved into the hardware equivalent of a rats nest and it's been
left to our customers to find the bugs - most being "show stoppers".

I sometimes wonder just how many customers we've lost because of this.
Also, dont get me wrong, the same should be applied to hardware design.
We recently interviewed an electronics engineering graduate who didn't know
the difference between NPN and PNP transistors !! What do they teach kids
these days ??

Should engineers be licensed ? - It's not a bad idea.

Chris Leyson
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