[bobthechef]

Precisely. I would have been less charitable in my response. Most software development is plumbing. To say we're solving new problems all the time and then to set that in some unclear opposition to what structural engineers do... I mean, just like software, each SE's project is different and yet similar across cases. That's uninformative, to say that least. So if you want to contrast them, it's best to actually know what you're talking. Also, I always hated occupational narcissism. It's a sign of narrow-mindedness.

(Besides, the question about whether software development is engineering or craft is very much real. John Allen, John McCarthy, Bertrand Meyer and Peter Denning have all written interesting things about this subject.)