Engineering vs Software Engineering

In the last issue of 'Engineering and Technology' magazine by the IET, I read a small article (I forgot the name of the author but I remember the topic). It was about the usage of the job title 'Engineer' within the software industry. The author had said that an Engineer should be a person who is involved in hardware design and manufacturing activities. In all the other industries such as 'Civil', 'Electronics', 'Mechanics', 'Aeronaughtics' etc. the tasks of an Engineer is related to designing hardware components. In contrast, the software industry has been mis-using the job title 'Engineer' for people who design software, which difers a lot from usual engineering processes. Hence, they should be called 'Software Designers' instead, he had further added.

I have been hearing these kinds of arguements time to time from various people I meet. The reasons I think for all these mis-understandings are;

1. Software industry has not matured enough or it has not aged well to define its standards.
2. Software Engineering is a totally different aspect of Engineering where people are new to the intangible properties of the product and its capabilities.

Because of its immatured nature, the people in this industry have started using many different job titles without standardizing/defining them in a proper way. This has lead to many problems and mis-understanding. However, I believe that the 'software engineering' would soon come under the 'umbrella of engineering' as the community become more aware about the issues nowadays.

One puzzle

Most of the time, I enjoy listening to radio channels rather than playing a music CD on my car stereo. Comperes can make the channels more interesting by having lots of fun items within the programs. One stuff they often do is 'riddling'. They throw away some quiz questions and let the audience answer them through the phone.

Today, on my way to the office I heard this quiz, being asked again and again by the Compere but not answered for hours of time.

Greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich need it, and if you eat it, you will die. What's that?

He was also providing some statistics about the riddle; He said 80% of kinder-garden students answered while only 17% of Standford university seniors. I didn't get the answer during my journey so I searched the net when I reached the office and found out that it is a famous riddle.

The answer is 'Nothing'.

Now I can read the puzzle with the answer in place.

Nothing is greater than God; nothing is more evil than the devil; the poor have nothing; the rich need nothing; and if you eat nothing, you will die.

Multiple web sites in IIS 5.1

Last few weeks I had been working with one web based CMS (Content Management System) software called Umbraco. The system has a limitation which does not allow it to be hosted inside a virtual directory within IIS. It has to be installed in the web server root in order for it to work properly.

I wanted to install and try the software at any cost. However, I didn't want to mess up my existing web server as I have already configured many virtual directories in it. I could not create a new web site instance through IIS also because, its not possible with Windows XP Professional and IIS 5.1. I had to find a solution for the problem because I couldn't just find a machine to install the new software only. So, as usual I googled the net and I could find some cool tools available to do the trick. Here I share the tool which I still use in my machine.

IIsAdmin.NET: Create Multiple Web Sites Under Windows XP

The only limitation with the tool is that only one web site can be active at one time. Since I use my machine for development purposes I feel it is tolerable.