Comments on: Does South Africa need professional Software Engineers?

By: isaac kondlo

isaac kondlo — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:24:08 +0000

I strongly agree on that all software developeres profesionals be given a huge ,
recognition , people cant simple call them selves developers without a proper recognise credential its really unfair , lets establish a programme with a department of ECSA and agree with them that before any call him self a developer posess some degree of credential , that’s the fact to mantain the , dignity and security in the field ,

By: Kobus

Kobus — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:16:55 +0000

I agree with Christiaan on the distinction between software development and engineering. I also strongly believe that we need more software engineering skills in software development.

By: Treasure B Mathala

Treasure B Mathala — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 08:19:03 +0000

There are so many views regarding this topic and there are still more individuals having their neither valid nor invalid hypothesis regarding this topic, the focus should rather be towards identifying why software engineering is not a branch of engineering under the ECSA framework.

By: Harry

Harry — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:36:44 +0000

I think it should not be part of engineering. Im a programmer my self and If I ever got any formal training from a university etc I would be so far behind. Programming evolves so much faster and formal institutions would not be able to keep up. How can you give someone a degree in one set of rules then 5 years later the scope has changes so much that its not valid anymore. Also people would probably love to be called software engineers and that would water down all programmers and make weak ones. The web is moving closer and closer to a dominant development standard for mobile app development and also desktop software. So … , things are changing so fast, i dont thing any one can keep up

By: Christiaan

Christiaan — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:34:23 +0000

I think people easily confuse software engineering with software development which is an indication of the sad state of software engineering projects in SA. There are plenty of standards available that defines a software *engineering* project as opposed to a software development project. Examples of software engineering would be a IEC60730 Class B compliant real time system for the control of a household appliance or other systems where deterministic execution is an absolute necessity. Project costs are typically measured in thousands of rands per line of code and is always accompanied by formalized documentation specifying exact behavior. I.e. the engineer responsible can sign his/her name with confidence to the project and moreover can be held liable for any serious design or implementation deficiencies i.e. in case of death or injury to users of the product. Software development however centers around services provided to complete projects with inexact and or flexible specification. The client has less strenuous requirements but also at a fraction of the cost. I’m quite certain that very few companies in S.A. would be able to afford, never mind implement, a software engineering project to the applicable international standards and that is where the problem lies. There are few products originating in SA where such standards are required and therefore the skills base especially amongst computer science graduates is very shallow with regards to engineering. I think calling yourself a professional engineer because you’ve written a few web apps is a bit of a stretch.

By: Treasure

Treasure — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 19:17:00 +0000

I am a software engineer and I believe it should be regarded.

By: John Bourhill

John Bourhill — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:58:58 +0000

I agree – It should.
If we want to be fully regarded and paid as professionals then we should be such a body.

By: Prof Barry Dwolatzky

Prof Barry Dwolatzky — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:07:50 +0000

I’ve tried to capture some of the threads coming out of this discussion in another posting: “Some further thoughts on the professionalisation of the SA ICT Sector” …. I’ve also created an opinion poll at the end of that new posting. Click over to the new posting to see where this conversation leads us.

By: Cobus

Cobus — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:35:47 +0000

This has been one of my pet peeves for some time so I am very glad for the debate.

I think just like in other professions where e.g. nurses and clinical assistants are held to a different set of standards than General Practitioners, Surgeons or other specialists for that matter, the same distinction needs to be made in our field. There is however a firm regulation in place that at least one professional with the correct credentials should be in control and ultimately responsible for the body of work being performed.

A complete lack of control such as we have currently is unprofessional per se, and until we have this in place all IT work will likely be deemed not to be of a professional nature.

I have also previously suggested that we put pressure on ECSA who incidentally has software engineering as one of their classified professions, yet have no regulations or voluntary associations in place to govern the field.

Since the statutory part is in place within ECSA this makes sense on some level, the only problem to overcome being the connection between the voluntary and statutory bodies. A complete lack of interest on this from the ECSA side, to the point where they have stated in their strategic plan that it is their goal not to assume responsibility over any additional areas of expertise, has made me realize that this is perhaps beating a dead horse to start with.

A friend of mine asked me last week when I think Software Engineering will become mature, and my response was that sadly from what I can see that is not the direction we are currently moving in. Reading things like this may yet give me reason to change my mind!

By: Hendrik Schalekamp

Hendrik Schalekamp — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:27:12 +0000

I believe Software Engineering should be a recognized discipline, but I also believe that a significant proportion of software development is not engineering. The best outcome to my mind would be to at the very least have a distinction between
1. software that is applied in traditional electrical engineering fields, such as automotive, aerospace, military and telecoms where there are significant standards defined that are of an engineering origin and quite often address embedded environments
2. software that is applied in “pure” computing fields, typically referred to application development where the standards are of a more evolutionary and dynamic nature
I come for the former field and have generally found that “Software Engineering” meetings, such as the ICSE have moved very far away from having any sense of what is happening in field 1. My preference would be to define two professional streams with the proponents being referred to as:
1. Software Engineer, and
2. Software Developer
Typically you would find Software Engineers have a Electrical Engineering degree, while Software Developers would more than likely have a B.Sc or B.Com Informatics/Computer science degree.