This isn't the first article to suggest that engineers and scientists have some specific, roughly opposite traits -- scientists are exploring, querying, doing r

This isn't the first article to suggest that engineers and scientists have some specific, roughly opposite traits -- scientists are exploring, querying, doing research, and engineers (note that they mostly mention mechanical engineers here, so ignore your computer science background for a moment) are usually applying established results rather than exploring the problem space. I can see how an application-focused, problem-solving discipline would be attractive to more rigid people with an interest in applying their principles to the world to "fix" it, and how such people might also be more likely to be terrorists. Computer engineers seem to be somewhat less represented by this article (again, all they actually mention are mechanical and architectural engineers), and I'll bet that holds up even in the west -- being a computer "engineer" isn't like being a mechanical engineer, in that we just don't know enough about our discipline to do much rote applying of well-known principles. That may change when and if Moore's Law stops doing its thing and we can start getting a good feel for the relative balance of computer resources and human resources in terms of cost. As long as that changes by a factor of two every eighteen months I don't see us settling into any well-established principles of work balance between people and computers, ever.