[benched]

Every damn time with this stupid observation. It's like an unconquerable memetic disease. The term 'Software Engineer' is a single term with its own commonly understood meaning. Commonly understood, except when someone wants to wax pedantic about that other specialized meaning of the word engineer. It is not meant to be part of a series like 'E.E', 'Mech.E.', 'Civ.E.', 'Software Eng.' It is not a case of people trying to specify which subtype of engineer that they are. It's a single term that just happens to be made of two words, and means the same thing as 'Software Developer' (regardless of individuals occasionally trying to post-rationalize it by giving it 'more rigorously architectural' connotations). You might as well argue that 'application windows' aren't windows, because you can't see through them, and they didn't evolve from the other kind of window. Engineering is a fine metaphor for much of what we do with code, data structures, data flows, transformations, and so on. Please, stop the madness.