[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.

[randomdata]

> Engineering is distinguished by being an academic career.

I expect you mean that Professional Engineer (PE) is distinguished as being a member of a certain professional organization (or groups of organizations). Indeed, that is true. Has little to do with the topic at hand, though.

I'm not familiar with any differentiation by academic career, unless you are thinking of "Professor of Engineering", or something along those lines? But "professor" seems to be the operative word there.

What about the definition of engineer even suggests academics? It is, in my mind, decidedly pointed to practitioners. It literally states "design, build, or maintain". Those are decidedly not academic pursuits.

[constantcrying]

Where I live you can not call yourself an "engineer" at all without a specific university degree.

It is pointless to discuss here, if you do not see the value in distinguishing the career of learning a trade and a getting a degree, I won't convince you otherwise. Obviously the rest of the world doesn't consider a bricklayer an engineer, just because he is building something and wouldn't want to conflate the civil engineer responsible for that building with the profession of brick laying.