Ok, how about Wikipedia:

>As stated by Fung et al. in the revision to the classic engineering text, Foundations of Solid Mechanics:
"Engineering is quite different from science. Scientists try to understand nature. Engineers try to make things that do not exist in nature.

>Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been.
—Theodore von Kármán

>There exists an overlap between the sciences and engineering practice; in engineering, one applies science. Both areas of endeavor rely on accurate observation of materials and phenomena. Both use mathematics and classification criteria to analyze and communicate observations.

>In the book What Engineers Know and How They Know It,[29] Walter Vincenti asserts that engineering research has a character different from that of scientific research. First, it often deals with areas in which the basic physics and/or chemistry are well understood, but the problems themselves are too complex to solve in an exact manner.

Technology doesn't really go out of date. It just morphs into something slightly different. We learned MS Access in college (ages ago) and the ERD certainly isn't out of date, nor are index, primary keys, efficient SQL and 3rd normal form.

We learned Object Pascal when I was in school. Recursion certainly isn't out of date, nor are link lists, grids, trees, arrays, efficient sorting algorithms, or writing good comments. Good inheritance trees or proper polymorphism and abstraction certainly aren't out of date. Even introspection is quite old.

How about mobile? iOS APIs are written in Objective-C which was created in the 80s. Android uses Java, created in the 90s. C is still very relevant and it was created in the 70s. The only thing I would think that is less relevant would be assembler and that's only because it's machine dependent and C was designed to eradicate it.

IEEE disagrees with you.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/engineering-is-not-science

He said limits of knowledge, not limits of your knowledge.

My definition would be in science you discover things, in engineering you create things.

It's all BS anyway. A CS can create things and a SE can discover things, they overlap.

In my CS101/2 classes we sure learned about Big O and OOP and recursion and whatnot which some would consider an element of SE.

I'm a year shy of old school (39) and always wondered where all the Engineer, Architect and Developer titles came from. I started as a hobby in the 80s and it was "coder" or "programmer." You were either a new one, a decent one, a good one or a great one, depending on how much of the lifecycle you could handle, and if you could work through the tough algorithms and so on.

I guess it was for business people to be able to categorize the skill of employees they knew absolutely nothing about. Since "coder" and "programmer" really didn't indicate any sort of skill level other than professional and amateur, fresh programmers latched on to the titles to nurture their egos.

Professional programmers noticed the noobs were calling themselves software engineers and whatnot and noticed that these new titles sounded more experienced than their simple "programmer," so they latched onto the naming convention.

I just made all that stuff up. Am I an opinion engineer or opinion developer?

>Of course, it will never happen, since it suits both major parties perfectly well to keep the voters ignorant.

I don't see how you came to that conclusion. Blue states have much better educational systems than red states for K-12.

Well they/we had something even better than the telecom boom, they had worldwide devastation of any economic competition. Who are our primary competitors economically and how were they fairing after WWII? They were all rubble and some didn't even have their own government.

I give that generation credit, but they didn't do it in a vacuum.

I was just augmenting the conversation about how getting behind on skills can creep up on people.

>Of course some older programmers really do slow down, stop learning, and coast along. It might be getting stuck in a rut and not bothering to do anything about it. It might be a matter of changing priorities, family commitments becoming more demanding and the like.

What the hell industry do you work in? You're trolling, right?

Here's how it works:

Microsoft just released Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012. A lot of people aren't happy with either Windows 8 or Visual Studio or Windows Store App development, they think it's silly / ugly / too abstract / all of the above.

New kid comes out of high school or college. He wants to learn whatever he can and eventually get paid for it. He embraces Windows 8 and VS 2012 and Windows Store App development because he has Windows 8 at home / school and there is a buzz about it. More and more companies start looking for Windows 8 / VS 2012 developers because they want to move from their clunky WinForms interface to a Windows 8 interface. Microsoft accelerates this by announcing a sunset of support for Windows 7. 3-5 years later, the first group is out of date. If their current job doesn't switch, they most likely stay out of date.

The old folks have seen this pattern before. The gone folks didn't adapt. That's why old folks who are still around are language / OS agnostic.

There were/are other methodologies other than waterfall before agile. Cinnibun was very efficient. It was waterfall broken into smaller pieces and adjusted at every interval, which is pretty much a sprint. No one really implements a true waterfall, it was borrowed from construction company management and quickly morphed into other methodologies when people realized that users couldn't conceptualize an entire system up front. Waterfall is really a baseline to compare other methologies to.

>People lose money investing all the time, would they get those higher taxes back?

They do. They only get taxed on net. If one investment earns $100 and the other loses $100, you have 0 net and therefore pay no taxes.

>Money being invested has already been taxed, why should it even be taxed again just because you invested it and it paid off?

All income is taxed. There are exceptions like income from a Roth IRA, but these exceptions have caps.

>Let alone be taxed MORE or even the same as standard income?

Capital gains tax (tax on investment income) is 20%. Most tech earning brackets are higher than that, plus you have to pay payroll and SS tax. During my early working years (Clinton) capital gains was taxed at 20% if you held your stock for a full year. Now it's 20% for day traders too.

I don't think the Ds are the party of peace. I think that moniker came out when Bush II pushed for war in Iraq when everyone else wanted to wait for the weapons inspections / sanctions.

Here's the 20th century wars the US fought in and the president in charge (if I remember correctly)

WWI - Wilson (D)
WWII - FDR (D)
Korea - Truman (D)
Vietnam - Kennedy (D) , ramped up by LBJ (D) (some feel this started with Ike (R) in the 50s with aid to the French)
Gulf War I - Bush (R)
Afghan War - Bush II (R)
Gulf War II - Bush II (R)

>Nixon pulled the US out of Vietnam

He also sabotaged the peace talks in 1968 which would have gotten us out earlier.

His slogan was "Withdrawl with Honor" which happened 4 years after he was elected with not much honor.

>enforced desegregation of southern schools

That was Kennedy and Johnson.

>created the EPA

I believe he did do that. He also created the drug schedule we now all know and love.

I've been paying attention to most of it I could bear. To me, his debt reduction plan was:

Lower Taxes
???
No Deficit!

To lower taxes that much, you have to make up for it if you are trying to reduce the deficit. He just refused to say how he was going to do that. If you are bold enough to lay out number for tax reductions, you better damn well be bold enough to say how you are gonna pay for it.