Curiousity Question about Software Engineers

I just want to know if anyone knows the difference(if there is one) of a software engineer and a real time software engineer(or a software engineer for real time systems)?

Software engineer can be anything, real time will be for devices

basically as said above.
real time is when information is being sent in real time. you need to read and process that information right now and react to it, otherwise some bad might happen... like people could die

While dying can be a consequence with all bad programming, it is more likely on a hard real time system (i.e. the systems often used for critical aviation and medical). Not necessarily true with all real time systems though.

That said...I've been working with a hard real time system for a while now and although I'm no expert, I believe that the difference between a software engineer and a real time software engineer is quite big. I feel that working on real time systems requires a certain level of experience and skill. Both of these which a regular software engineer won't always have.

TLDR - They are not interchangeable, and often RTSE is what happens when you level up enough. ding! lol

also, depending on the system, you may need a strong engineering background

Real time software engineer works on time-deterministic systems.

Whatsisname said:

Real time software engineer works on time-deterministic systems.

Click to expand...

This. RTS programming requires most efficient code for quicker response time, and being able to handle amounts (whether large or small) and process it within an allocated time period and produce results. When I was doing real-time response programming for an earthquake response outfit, the less time it takes to produce results for the client(s), the better it was. If you detect seismic waves and it takes your program seconds, if not minutesto process it, it could mean the difference between being able to warn people and at least starting/preparing for evac if it turned into a high Magnitude wave and being hit out of nowhere and having an entire town rubbled.

As others have said, Real-Time systems have a much higher focus on responsiveness and performance. Not to say that "regular" software engineers don't also focus on such things, but they're usually not necessarily the guiding forces - other things like usability, maintainability, etc. come into play on a more equal footing for regular software.

Same thing, real-time engineers also deal a lot with distributed systems, since many of these are real time.