[choeger]

I don't know what software engineering is ans I strongly suspect you don't, either. I fact, I think that software engineering is just a term invented to give non-programmers (professors, managers, consultants) a somewhat technical career path. There is certainly no engineering happening when someone creates a new web service or a new device driver. I don't think there's engineering involved in Amazon's latest cloud service or googles latest feature.

Regardless, programming is a craft. And programmers are essentially crafts(wo)man. Everything's handmade, there's only unicates, there's no formal education besides some guild rules (aka coding interviews) and the science of computing which tells you how and why a program works or doesn't but not how you create it.

There has been some research into actual engineering practices for software. But the underlying science often gets ridiculed, not applied, by practical programmers.

[abernard1]

> I don't know what software engineering is ans I strongly suspect you don't, either.

I do actually. I am retired now, have 25 years of experience, and a physics degree from a prestigious college. I built control systems for microscopes, founded an industrial control systems company, wrote linux drivers for tuner cards, and built downhole fluid simulation software used on oil rigs. I also did every other "soft" type of software development you can imagine.

But there's tons of rules, if the industry would bother to learn. Comparing software developers 25 years ago when I started to today is embarrassing. The question of the OP is probably not "does the software industry learn?" but rather "is the software industry forgetting things it used to know?"