This is a bogus comparison. The difference between software engineering and other types of engineering is that for software, the detailed design is the impleme

This is a bogus comparison. The difference between software engineering and other types of engineering is that for software, the detailed design is the implementation. For other engineering, several months or more of design and simulation occur these days before a single device/bridge/airplane is built. If you asked the engineers at the beginning exactly how many transistors this chip was going to use, or how many kgs of concrete/metal/etc., they wouldn't know the answer yet either. I am going through and profiling code, analyzing memory requirements etc. before selecting new hardware. And then we prototype before finalizing the design. If that isn't engineering I don't know what is.