[kevindamm]

I think the naming originates from the similar term "feature engineering" which had been in use for about as long as machine learning in general. The approaches to feature engineering are also a bit of a mix of science and art -- in some cases statistical and probability theory are used to arrive at an appropriate feature mix, in other cases it's very much throwing everything at the wall to measure stickiness.

Prompt engineering is definitely a bit more art than engineering, but it's not far off conceptually from what feature engineering is.