In message , at 20:30:07 on Sat, 14 Jan
2017, tim... remarked:

Ah, a slight light dawns - you think Uber is just an App, and the
tooth fairly provided the backoffice/online platform?

There is no connection with this discussion on the way that "software
engineer" has been Hijacked

and Uber's requirement.

You are still insisting that it doesn't require software engineers to
build Uber's platform?

Jesus, no I am not

You really are not understanding the point that I made

Just to be clear, you *do* accept that the term "software engineering"
applies to the task of implementing Uber's platform?

I have written Windows Applications in a past world (starting at 2.0)

Bully for you. Uber's backoffice/online platform is not an "application".

the back office part isn't, and even when I did work on Win stuff I had
no experience of that.

As to the online part, surely it is, as in "there an app for that!"

In the days of Windows 2.0 there was a Windows app which purported to
produce customised Windows apps. The problem was that both the app
itself, and its offspring were excrutiatingly slow, and the offspring
had a very limited UI feature set.

Fast forward to today, and the way you make a new Android App is to use
an SDK on a PC (not an Android app on a phone).

I'm talking about software which is engineered to provide an
integrated solution, thus Google's search engine and cloud
processing counts, even though you need a browser and operating
system on your device to access it. Ditto eBay's trading platform.

But the point is that you were using this example as some sort of
proof that there is some similarity in the way that software
developers work proficiently on software for an engineering product.

All the deliverables above (Uber, Google, eBay) are engineering products.

I don't agree

they use programs that run on general purpose computers (except for
edge cases like Google glass)

None of the companies substantive products requires "traditional"
engineering skills, except whilst writing software.

Is there an invisible "electronic" in front of "engineering" there? If
so that's just one of dozens of types of engineering. If you have some
pressing need to include metal[1]-bashing into anything you are prepared
to call an engineering product then perhaps you aren't aware that Google
designs and builds its own data centres, full of generators, air
conditioning and all sorts of other non-softwary things.

[1] Semiconductors are metal for the purpose of this discussion

I know nothing about Blockchain,

QED, which is why it's necessary to recruit new blood which does.

Of course it's necessary to recruit more staff if you need them

But you will recall that the discussion was about getting skilled
people and the learning curve if you couldn't

Which is the situation today. A huge skills shortage in the areas under
discussion.

You don't recruit and train people to use random development
environments that don't bring anything to your type of product.

FSVO "you". I'd be looking at "the industry as a whole", not each
company separately.

it is (/would appear to be) not a useful tool when writing software
for an engineering product.

Blockchain isn't a tool, it's a process (or protocol if you prefer).

Though it seems to be something to do with accessing stored records
(let's call that a database, shall we?)

One way of thinking about it that it's to databases, what bitcoin is to
money in your bank account.
--
Roland Perry