can we ban web developers who call themselves “developers”?
also php programmers who call themselves anything?
I’m a full-stack web developer and am involved all the way through including cloud infrastructure, API development, database creation/maintenance, test automation, architecture etc.
I guess what makes a “developer” in your context different? Embedded? Kernel?
Only those who code in the same language as I am can be called developers. Everyone else is just an impostor and their technology doesn’t matter! Real programmers use my language of choice
Nah, no need for this kind of gatekeeping. Anyone who deals with js and its billions of frameworks on a daily basis deserves to be called a developer.
Agreed.
We also deserve to be called, every so often, to see how we’re doing.
Heyyy its your super duper new project manager! I hope you are feeling a-mazing because you are my a-ce on the team. Anyways i need you to do things twice as fast, because we are running low on budget after sales promised another feature without extra billing and the CEO already signed off on it. Please make this happen somehow. If this project isn’t succesfull i’ll get fired and have to sell the house. But no pressure!
For me, it was this
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-real-escape-string.php
Blame MySQL for that. The PHP API just mirrors the MySQL C API of the same name. https://dev.mysql.com/doc/c-api/8.0/en/mysql-real-escape-string.html
Modern PHP doesn’t use it - any modern code uses PDO with prepared statements.
Never used it in over 23 years of using PHP. Also, I don’t thing that has existed anymore for the past 10 years or so?
Seriously, if we’re going to do this, can we also bitch about painful java apps from 10 years ago, or the hilariously shitty modules in node from 10 years ago? I can go on for a while, but you hopefully get the point.
yeah, i’ve used it and it’s absolutely trash…
but here’s an article that sums up my feelings: https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/
That article is over a decade old. A lot of these issues aren’t relevant any more or have been fixed. Some weren’t even PHP issues, for example mysql_real_escape_string is a MySQL API (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/c-api/8.0/en/mysql-real-escape-string.html).
PHP isn’t the best language, but it’s not as bad as some people claim it to be, especially if you use a good framework like Laravel.
That is literally a decade old article with basically 1 complaint that sometimes functions are strpos() and sometimes str_len(). Anything else it’s saying is “I don’t even know how to say it”. Really now? Any of your complaints have been fixed since about a decade ago, so why don’t you give it a try?
As if webapps aren’t usurping mobile and desktop apps, anything not C# or .NET is a toy language?
c# and .net? ewww…
gimme c, c++, go, rust, ruby, python…
and umm, no dude, native apps are a lot more powerful than web apps… they are not usurped at all
there’s more of them, but there’s more scooters than motorcycles…
Scooters are more efficient, get you where you need to go and cost less to maintain. Your analogy is actually pretty good in that regard.
So if I’m using Rust to write a web app that compiles to WebAsm, what am I?
I mean who cares? But also why? My old job title was “software engineer” and I just did web dev.
This is a new satire site, right? These days it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between reality and fiction in tech. The rest of their posts are pretty much spot on.
It’s a good thing that Engineer is a protected profession and not everyone can claim it, like Lawyer or Doctor.
In the US now it’s “oh you’re an engineer? Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?”
I disagree, I believe the regulatory agencies do nothing in Canada to legitimize their claim to regulating software development. Heck, they do nothing for electronics or semiconductors or anything smaller than the power grid.
And this why i aim to get a PhD.
What if they are actually a software engineer, with a cert? >_>;
I have worked with actual cert’d engineers on web projects, lol
with a cert
Engineering isn’t usually a cert. It’s a degree. I have a Bachelor of Engineering, majoring in Software Engineering. There’s probably a cert level qualification in software development, and frankly it’s probably just as good at producing effective software developers as an engineering degree, but it would be misleading, if you claim that only those with some particular qualification can call themselves engineers, for the qualification to be a cert.
In Canada the Cert and the Degree are separate.
You typically through getting your degree also become certified, but the key is while your degree lasts forever, the Cert has to be maintained and renewed.
Cert has a lifetime and expires and you have to keep it up to date.
In Alberta for example the regulatory authority is APEGA: https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/certifications-in-alberta/engineer/
I think even technically the license is also a separate piece of paperwork.
Degree: you completed school at some point
Cert: up to date on current practices, must be maintained, requires the degree
License: you are legally allowed to practice in the province/country and have registered. Requires degree+cert
Ah right, you’re talking certification. I was thinking certificate, because “Certificate I – Certificate IV” are very common less-than-Bachelor qualifications where I live, usually shortened to Cert I–Cert IV.
Obviously the terms “certificate” and “certification” are etymologically basically identical, but their meaning when it comes to the type of qualifications they represent are significantly different.
It’s a license issued by the state. As in, “you could go to jail for practicing engineering without a license.”
(Source: was on track to become a licensed civil engineer until I decided to do software “engineering” instead.)
software “engineering”
See, the thing is, software engineering in Australia is engineering. My degree was accredited by Engineers Australia and had the same requirements as a civil or mechanical engineering degree.
Of course, it definitely is still the black sheep of the engineering world. In the vast majority of (possibly all) cases, practising as an actual engineer is no different from practising as someone with a different degree (like IT or computer science), practising with a lower-level qualification like a certificate, or practising after being entirely self-taught.
