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For the life of me I can't get invested in these semantic games. The author even acknowledges Wittgenstein! This question only matters as regarding whether it

For the life of me I can't get invested in these semantic games. The author even acknowledges Wittgenstein! This question only matters as regarding whether it has operational significance, and it's really hard to imagine a situation where the term would have any operational significance. The author says that we can benchmark against other engineering disciplines and look for guidance or inspiration if software is engineering. But we can do that whether or not we use the term! We can compare software to plumbing, and take away what we can, or compare it to law and take away what we can, or compare it to electrical engineering and take away what we can. The term itself is irrelevant here.

Warwolt 5y ago
I think this is bang on the money. Before asking _if_ software engineering is "real engineering" we should ask what we mean by engineering and why the question matters, otherwise it's a fruitless effort of talking past each other. Hillel seems to want to ask if we're "real engineers" so that we can learn from the other engineering disciplines, especially on taking responsibility, which I think is a good way to frame the question. Most of these comments seem to instead bicker about semantics, which I feel misses the opportunity to be more focused and constructive.