Yes craftsmen design things, but the nature of what they design is different from what engineers design. A carpenter is expected to be good at designing and creating objects like cabinets and doors, using primarily the single material of wood and a few screws. If the carpenter is also good at designing and creating complex multi-object, multi-material things like houses and housing developments, that's cool, but it's not something we'd assume from knowing they are a carpenter. Some architects can build cabinets, but that doesn't neccessarily relate to whether they are good architects or not.

A webmaster who has become proficient at CGI scripts to do simple tasks might also be able to design an enterprise-wide software strategy, but it's not something we'd assume from knowing they are a webmaster. Most of us here at the Monastery can take potshots at particular bits of how PM works, but it's gods like you who have the whole picture.

An engineer is someone who understands how a complex group of things built from a diverse set of materials work in conjunction with each other and who is capable of designing and planning a system that will safely perform the functions it needs to. I'd say some programmers could be described the same way.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Programming Versus Engineering by jZed
in thread (OT) Programming as a craft by revdiablo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.