[parliament32]

Respectfully, it's absolutely important to "gatekeep" a title that has an established definition and certain expectations attached to the title.

OP says, "BUT YOU DON’T KNOW HOW THE CODE WORKS.. No I don’t. I have a vague idea, but you are right - I do not know how the applications are actually assembled." This is not what I would call an engineer. Or a programmer. "Prompter", at best.

And yes, this is absolutely "lesser than", just like a middleman who subcontracts his work to Fiverr (and has no understanding of the actual work) is "lesser than" an actual developer.

[emodendroket]

That's not the point being made to you. The point is that most people in the "software engineering" space are applying known tools and techniques to problems that are not groundbreaking. Very few are doing theoretical computer science, algorithm design, or whatever you think it is that should be called "engineering."

[windexh8er]

So the TL;DR here is... If you're in the business of recreating wheels - then you're in luck! We've automated wheel recreation to an acceptable degree of those wheels being true.

[emodendroket]

Most physical engineers are just applying known techniques all the time too. Most products or bridges or whatever are not solving some heretofore-unsolved problem.