I think it depends on the professor. When I wrote my diploma thesis (in Ilmenau), my professor also insisted on academic references and something on the researc

I think it depends on the professor. When I wrote my diploma thesis (in Ilmenau), my professor also insisted on academic references and something on the research side. A pure engineering project was not accepted. But it's not super hard to disguise some engineering as research, if it at least contains something new (e.g. the work here does use Rust as a relatively new language).