Great points! One other remark I'll share about software engineering is that the amount of engineering rigor required or warranted depends a lot upon the task a

Great points! One other remark I'll share about software engineering is that the amount of engineering rigor required or warranted depends a lot upon the task and problem. If I'm building a back-office website for a few colleagues, I may not invest the same rigor as if I'm building a website that will be accessed by hundreds of millions of people. Many software tasks do not require great rigor: you add rigor until the incremental benefit is less than the incremental cost. As a result, I would guess that the average software engineering task is less rigorous than the average real-world engineering task, but that's only because real-world engineering frequently risks or protect lives. Even the tire rope swing, the hammock, and the treehouse put lives at risk if built poorly. The back-office website on average does not. Business might be disrupted or individuals might be inconvenienced, but typically no one can die. Yet, many types of software involve just as much rigor if not more as other engineering disciplines. For an example, read "They Write the Right Stuff", a story of NASA avionics software engineers [0]. I consider software engineering to be an engineering discipline because of the fact that rigor is required, and because a good engineer must know how much of it is appropriate, and be able to apply it effectively. A software engineer produces software to specified reliability and tolerances, according to requirements. [0] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff