[constantcrying]

You are totally misunderstanding me. I am not saying that software engineering does not exist, but that most people who are software developers are not software engineers.

If you look at what engineers are doing in other disciplines you will find that in software there are some people doing the same thing. They are doing things like drafting requirements, designing, defining, simulating, overseeing, but don't spend much, if any, time actually building things.

[randomdata]

> They are doing things like drafting requirements, designing, defining, simulating

Which is design; captured in the definition.

You're welcome to invent whatever meaning for engineering you want (although you kind of need to define it, in that case – we can't read your mind), but going by what most people consider engineering to be, either all software developers are engineers or none of them are.

[constantcrying]

>either all software developers are engineers or none of them are.

Why? I have worked jobs where I definitely didn't do any real design and was just there to implement certain things. I absolutely wouldn't call what I did engineering.

[randomdata]

Again, "build" is also captured in the prevailing engineering definition (although software may not be).

What is the significance of you not wanting to call it engineering?

[constantcrying]

>What is the significance of you not wanting to call it engineering?

It conflates two separate things with not a great amount of overlap. It also describes two different paths, an academic path and a tradesman path. The distinction is obviously useful in describing people/roles/activities.

You could also ask why we are conflating machinists with engineers, clearly machinists are building things, definitely more so than engineers.

[randomdata]

> You could also ask why we are conflating machinists with engineers

You could, but it would be rather silly as machinist is clearly a subset of engineer (within what most people deem engineer to mean). It is not a conflation, it is a more precise term. Like using "surgeon" over "physician". It is not like a surgeon has anything to do with your family doctor evaluating your common cold symptoms. Those are entirely different jobs too, yet absolutely get grouped together.

The problem here, it seems, is that we've never come up with generally accepted terms to differentiate the different roles under the software engineering umbrella. I expect that is because the differentiation doesn't matter beyond trying to appeal to some pointless emotions.

[constantcrying]

>You could, but it would be rather silly as machinist is clearly a subset of engineer

That is ridiculous. Engineering is distinguished by being an academic career.

Obviously there is value in distinguishing academics and tradesmen.