Engineering is about solving problems using well-understood principles and processes that have been thoroughly tested (as opposed to science, which tries to dis

Engineering is about solving problems using well-understood principles and processes that have been thoroughly tested (as opposed to science, which tries to discover or invent new principles and processes). It has nothing to do with certificates, legalese, or unions. Programmers have a lot of engineering work supporting them in different ways and sometimes they do actual computational engineering. I don't have a problem with calling myself a programmer. Patrick M does because he wants to translate his work into the language of corporate and marketing communication because he thinks this will make him more valuable. I'm not sure that's a good strategy except to create a kind of odd cloud around what he's doing. Programming is not so mysterious to management anymore. They know it's valuable. Those that don't, well, I'm not sure you want to work for them anyway.