As a kid: my dad As a university student: some brilliant young academics and read a lot + self-taught As a professional: working with experienced engineers fr

As a kid: my dad As a university student: some brilliant young academics and read a lot + self-taught As a professional: working with experienced engineers from many different disciplines. In non-software field, engineering is more a design, specification role. You identify and document the requirements, breakdown the design into modules and carefully specify, etc the solution. So often what is called software engineering is, in effect, software construction with minimal design. No wonder so many enterprise-sized projects end up over budget and late.