In some cases, perhaps, but the _state of the art_ is always evolving and a lot of it is informed by how people practice software engineering in the wild. Prof

In some cases, perhaps, but the _state of the art_ is always evolving and a lot of it is informed by how people practice software engineering in the wild. Professional Engineer is a modern concept. In the United States it started in 1907. Sure we have been building irrigation systems for thousands of years but it wasn't regulated by governments until recent history. Until then it was a practice guarded by guilds and seen as a craft. Software isn't without its own history. The mathematicians and logicians had been working on it long before the first computing machine was built. We've known how to compute values for thousands of years. Are we still in the craft/guild phase of the discipline? I don't think so. There are professional engineering organizations around the world that are certifying software engineers. If that is all that is required you can apply today. The missing piece is that it's not required by governments around the world to have any professional affiliation or certification to practice programming professionally. Some argue this is a good thing as it keeps the playing field level. Others argue its bad as it enables profit-motivated companies to cut corners that harm businesses and users. But as far as best practices go, as long as there are enough people practising them across the industry, then it's not simply a preference. A good guide on this is the SWEBOK [0] published by the IEEE which attempts to catalogue these practices in a living document that gets updated as the state of the art develops. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Engineering_Body_of_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Engineering_Body_of_K...