APEGA is a self-regulating professional association that licenses individuals and companies seeking to practice engineering in the province. The Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act, which gives APEGA is regulatory power, defines engineering as the use of math, chemistry, physics or related subjects in work “aimed at the discovery, development or utilization of matter, materials or energy or in any other way designed for the use and convenience of humans.
Haymond cited self-driving cars, nuclear power, avionics and biomedical fields as areas where botched software engineering can have “catastrophic consequences.”“If you want a photo of a bald eagle swooping down to grab a mouse, that’s where you get it from,” he said. “How could the public be impacted by a catastrophic failure?”
She added that when iStock was taken over by U.S.-based Getty Images, Canadian iStock employees with the title “software developer” felt American employees with the title “software engineer” had more “professional cachet” and pushed for the adoption of the term.