[penprogg]

So I decided to search the definition of engineering on the internet because I've heard this whole "software engineering is not engineering" thing before:

> Engineering (from Latin ingenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise") is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.

So, software "engineering" definitely involves the use of scientific, economic, social and practical knowledge to build, maintain, research, and improve devices, systems, and processes. So that, in my lowly opinion, makes it engineering "in the strictest sense of the term".

Arguing about semantics is extremely stupid if you are not a PHD in linguistics.

[orblivion]

I don't think it uses science, other than scientifically studied development processes, and how many start ups use thast? If you count computer science, I'd kick the can down the road and ask if computer science is a real science? Does it use the scientific method? It seems more as applied mathematics.

[kdoherty]

Science involves the application of the scientific method. Take academic research, for example. Engineering may involve the scientific method, but it isn't required to validate that scientific knowledge was used. Scientific knowledge could be an algorithm for autonomous environment mapping. Implementing that in an autonomous car and ensuring system functionality in the many possible environments it might end up in, that is certainly a feat of engineering.