From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.men
Subject: Re: a programmer is not an engineer, indeed
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:11:49 GMT
	<MUFFY.92Sep14093511@remarque.berkeley.edu>
	<1992Sep14.152837.9951@uoft02.utoledo.edu>
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In-reply-to: dweddin@uoft02.utoledo.edu's message of 14 Sep 92 20:28:37 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.152837.9951@uoft02.utoledo.edu> dweddin@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>> You're right, a programmer is NOT an engineer, and an engineer is NOT a
>> programmer.  We programmers have to take programming courses that the
>> typical engineer couldn't handle on their best day.  
>i doubt it. in my experiece the if you look at most universities, the
>ranks of the business and computer science departments are populated
>with a bunch of engineering "wanna-be's". 

Well, in *my* experience, the people in Computer Science *want* to be in
computer science and *don't* want to be engineers.  Not everyone thinks
as highly of engineering as you seem to.  It's not a bad thing at all,
but it is just another discipline, and not one which is that interesting
to a lot of people.

>the running joke in most engineering schools is that when people ask
>you your major your freshman (freshperson?) year, you reply...
>"i'm in pre-business" or "i'm in pre-computer science"

In *most*, or in the one you were in?  I know lots of engineers,
software and otherwise, and they do not seem to have this attitude.  Of
course, they may be cleverly concealing their feelings of superiority...
*grin*.

>[...] but out in the "real world" (where i've been) the
>corporations prefer to hire engineers and teach them to program well
>as opposed to hiring you CS folk and teaching you to be engineers.

I've been working in the "real world" for 7 years now.  My current
company prefers to hire people who can *program*, since we are a
software company.  Most of the programmers here have degrees in CS or
math.

>i think that anecdotal proof is no proof at all.

*LAUGH*...indeed.  However, the only proof you are offering is also no
proof at all, which is your prejudices in favor of "Engineering" and,
presumably, those of your friends.  The prejudices of the people I know
are quite different.

>>........
>>deleted anecdote where the good CS students win out while the evil,
>>cocky engineers get the "come-upins"
>>very amusing, muffy.
>>........

Actually, they didn't "get a come-uppance."  I helped them with their
programming and they were quite happy.  Happy ending all around.  Of
course, most of them were intelligent and therefore realized that their
ideas about computer scientists had been incorrect.  (I should point out
that the engineers I know now might well have been prejudiced similarly
to you while in school, but they have learned that engineering is not
the only useful skill during their time in the "real world.")

>> By the way, I also took several math and physics courses, as they were
>> required by the CS department for a degree in CS.  Math up to Linear
>> Algebra (plus probability and statistics) and two semesters of physics,
>> to be specific.  Physics is great...*smile*.
>two comments, first i suspect that you didn't really take REAL engineering
>and physics classes, since most schools have different classes for the
>hard core science folk and the rest of the world. we used to call those
>classes "baby physics" or "baby math" etc.

Yeah, you would.  No, they were the "regular" classes:  "Physics with
Calculus I," "Physics with Calculus II," "Calculus I," "Calculus II,"
"Analytic Geometry," "Linear Algebra."  There *was* a non-calculus
version of physics available, but it was not applicable to the BSCS
degree.

>lets assume for a moment that they were the SAME. i notice that you didn't
>mention any classes on Control theory, electro magnetics, signal analysis,
>or electric machines....these are all important. certainly more important
>than physics ever would be.

Why are they important?  I write applications in Lisp.  Those classes
are important to engineers, I suppose.  *You* didn't mention Analysis of
Algorithms, Operating Systems, Natural Language Processing, Graphics,
Sorting and Searching, Database Management Systems, Theory of Computing,
Data Strutures, etc.  The point is, engineering and CS are two different
courses of study, just as engineering is different from math, biology,
chemistry, english literature, education, history, etc.  What is it
(other than it being, apparently, *your* course of study) that makes you
think that engineering is inherently superior?

>but the point is...YOU DIDN'T. now when an employer comes to hire,
>he or she looks at the list of classes and the degree and says,

>"hey, muffy did well...but didn't take any of the engineering classes
> while fred did well and DID take the engineering classes."

Nope.  My employers have actually never *looked* at my school records.
They say "hey, Muffy is an excellent programmer and a smart person,
which is just what we're looking for."  I have *never* been asked about
which engineering courses I took or why I got a degree in CS rather than
engineering. 

>> Math is not dangerous or anything...*grin*.  I sincerely doubt that 
>> women are instinctively "afraid" of math and science.
>you apparantly are not afraid of them...so maybe you can answer the
>question better than i, why didn't you go into engineering with
>a specialty in software as opposed to going into CS ??? 

Because I went into CS with an emphasis in engineering, since I was much
more interested in programming than in engineering, but I was a little
interested in engineering.  My talent is for programming; that has been
clear since my first semester of college.

>the fields are similar while the job and career prospects are certaily
>MUCH better for the engineer. so why CS and not engineering?

Not around here they're not.  People care about your programming ability
where I am.

>> However, men don't get them at all, which seems a little unfair, yes?
>where did that come from????

Are you saying that men *are* told "men can't do math"?  Where do you
*live*?  I have *never* heard anyone say this, and I have lived in many
places in the USA.

>and by the way...it doesn't matter if it "seems a little unfair", nobody
>said that it was going to be fair. you will have obstacles that others
>do not and advantages that others do not.

Indeed, but this being alt.feminism and all, it seemed relevant to me
that these messages are divided by gender.  I will be very interested to
hear where it is that they are not.

>nobody ever said, gee...let's hire don because we haven't met our quota
>of "white-anglo-saxon-protestant-males". it must be nice to be able to
>be hired and never fired because an employer fears a civil rights
>discrimination case.

I suppose it might be nice.  I don't know anyone who has experienced
this, so I can't say.  It might also be nice to be automatically assumed
to be competent.  Certainly, the men I know seem to think so.

>so what should we do, muffy? hire women as engineers who are not qualified
>to make up for all the years of negative messages? that would be great
>news to me when i drive over a bridge that collapses...

Nope.  I never said anything of the sort, and I wonder why you are
dragging this straw man in.  I think that everyone who is hired should
be qualified for the job they are hired for.  However, that should be
based on *real* qualifications for the job, not on nonsense like "oh,
all engineers are of course better than all computer scientists because
we just *know* that computer scientists are people who couldn't handle
engineering" or "we know than women aren't good at science, so we won't
even bother considering a woman, since she obviously got where she is
because of some quota, rather than competence."

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                               muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: alt.feminism