While several other professions have a long, established and standard procedure of certification, the title “software engineer” is applied to both self-made developers, turned into experts of some technique, or to people with PhD degrees, and a long history of both academic and professional achievements.

When in some situations it is not legally possible to use the title “software engineer” without an engineering degree of some kind (for example, in some states of the USA or some institutions like the IEEE – http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/positions/titleengineer.html), the term “software developer” is usually applied to people in charge of designing, writing and / or maintaining software-based systems. I will use the terms developer and engineer interchangeably in this discussion, which some people might think is not correct. Continue reading →