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Well, I am not sure you got what I meant. What I said is not that
engineers will never code or won't have to after a couple years. The
idea is more that engineers will be able to have people with different
skills to manage, or to work closely with, so they'll have to know many
fields to understand the whole thing. And I was not talking specifically
about computers, but about all kinds of engineering. Engineering is
about understanding and developping projects as a whole, which doesn't
exclude working also on the details.
Of course, many engineers may end doing different things, which is
another advantage of the generalist approach. I'm actually doing
websites now!
Yeah, I wasn't accusing you of sharing that viewpoint, at least not in
the same way that those students I mentioned in my post.
But you do agree that in the case of Software Engineers at least, you
will lead a big project only after you have several years of experience
(more or less depending on how big the project is), and even so, only if
you are skilled enough? But more importantly, you don't need to lead
over anyone to be a Software Engineer, even a good one.
In other words, it's not very analogous to say, civil engineering.
Well, I think a simple look at the real world is enough to agree that you
need several years of experience and good skills. Moreover, my personal
experience is that it's easier to get a job (and therefore the much needed
working experience) when you have a 3-year degree than a 5-year one, at
least in Spain: I've been told at many job interviews that I was
'overqualified' (I didn't care about that, just wanted to work, but they
did)
However, I still think all engineerings* are conceptually the same: you
need all qualifications for large projects (which doesn't exclude smaller
ones) in your field; given enough time, you have to be able to do
everything. Of course, for anything larger than quite small, you'll need a
team. It's just that Civil Engineering usually deals with large projects,
and most Software projects are smaller.
I insist: this is conceptually. Real world is most Computer Engineers
never get to do engineering work, and almost all spend their first years
not being engineers.
*To me, engineering is the process of creating mechanisms, from
planification to physical result.
