@whitequark It's messy. I think the debate is threefold, the first PoV is about the professional qualification, the second PoV is a criticism of software risk management and reliability ("is it really engineering if developers can't be sanctioned for bugs?"), and the third is about whether software development is mature enough to be considered an engineering field. I think many commentators (Alan Kay? Gerald Sussman?) once said software development is still in the pre-engineering era. I think PoV #2 and #3 are legitimate discussions (and we also have people who use PoV #3 and PoV #2 to justify PoV #1...)