There is not such thing is "partial" engineering. Engineering is the creation and ongoing management of any real world object (building, cars, bridge, computer

There is not such thing is "partial" engineering. Engineering is the creation and ongoing management of any real world object (building, cars, bridge, computer) which has affect on its environment. I.e. they are placed in the real world to achieve some sort of a function. The role of the engineer is: 1) Find out what function a machine should provide 2) Create this function by building the artifact on time, and in cost effective manner. An artist on the other hand: 1) Does not care about the function. I.e. if the thing is useful or not. 2) Does not care about the time/cost etc. The fact that software is just a description (bunch of text files), does not mean that it does not affect the real world. As I said, the machine in the real world is the general propose computer. The computer understand this text files, and turn itself into the machine.