Engineering is accountable for harm

Are any of us front end developers placed to call ourselves engineers? Like the cicadas emerging, this question comes up at regular intervals in the community.

Gatekeeping is thrown around. The life preserving work of engineers of consequence are touted. It’s a fraught argument because in the software world we’re all just making it up along the way.

What would it take for the title “Web Engineer” to mean something?

Some folks will say never because poor HTML or a several megabytes of JavaScript dropped from a server won’t kill anyone. Well… not directly anyway, depending on the purpose of the site of course.

Why is death necessary consequence before anyone becomes accountable to the harm caused by poorly built software? Until companies and corporations are accountable for the harms caused by their digital services, the developers responsible for the work won’t be either.

The best we can do is to try to demonstrate that softare can be good for people. Like a good doctor, a good Web Engineer does their best to do no harm.