[mitthrowaway2]

"Real" engineers do new things too, where there may be un-anticipated failure modes, and where the answer can't just be looked up from a book of standards. Things like boring the world's longest tunnel under a mountain with sparsely available geological samples, building passenger trains that beat the world speed record, building reusable space rockets, and so on. Software engineers aren't the only ones solving novel and complex problems, and failure is sometimes understandable.

You don't lose your license if you fail at solving a hard problem, where nobody has succeeded before. But to be granted the responsibility to attempt those problems you have to demonstrate experience, education, and competence. You lose your license if you demonstrate disregard for ethics, basic safety standards, recordkeeping, and so on. I don't see why software engineering can't, in principle, have a similar level of professionalism, especially when critical systems are being built on top of it. But it would strongly conflict with the ethos of anarchy, moving-fast-and-breaking-things, and autodidact garage hacker culture that permeates the field (and which software engineering has greatly benefitted from).