I'd prefer to see software developers, programmers, etc drop the claim on the title "engineer", though for different reasons than the ones you listed. I don't

I'd prefer to see software developers, programmers, etc drop the claim on the title "engineer", though for different reasons than the ones you listed. I don't think the public associates "engineer" with PEs the way it associates JD with lawyers or MD with physicians/surgeons. I think the public thinks of an "engineer" as someone who does something confusing and technical - for instance, people don't really expect a "sound engineer" to have PE. I also don't think that PE's have a strong historical claim to exclusive use of the word engineer, which most people initially think of as the person who drives the train. Lastly, so many branches of engineering have little to no use for licensing, but does this mean they shouldn't be considered engineering anymore? Do they need to invent new terms for their practitioners? That said, I never describe myself as an engineer (though I do have a MS in industrial engineering), because I don't want the PE people to start thinking they have a claim on software. Like a lot of people on this board (where an economic liberalism seems to prevail), I'm very suspicious of the professional associations, which are immensely cartel-like in their behavior. I also don't consider software development to be necessarily "easier" than engineering. I just think it's very different, and that we should assert and insist on our own identity, and rigorously resist attempts to form cartels and restrict the right to practice, especially from PE folks, who in my opinion have no business regulating software (if they want to regulate software related to civil engineering, they should do that as civil engineers, not by making up some software engineer title and using scope creep to form a cartel, which is typical of professional associations).