I don't know if it was the worst thing. I agree that it was unfortunate for the one reason you gave (waterfall), but there are other reasons that a new discipli

I don't know if it was the worst thing. I agree that it was unfortunate for the one reason you gave (waterfall), but there are other reasons that a new discipline(/profession) would want to emulate the practices of an older and more established discipline. Another reason to choose "engineering" was to encourage software practitioners to incorporate some of the proven methods of traditional engineering. As an example, I've noticed recently that ethics training is an established part of an Engineer's education, but not so with Software "Engineers". There is always room to improve, and I don't think ignoring the past, and justifying that ignorance by saying "but we're different" is necessarily the best way to achieve that improvement.