FWIW, I went through a journey a couple years ago to try to define the term "software engineer." I notice there were A LOT of people just throwing code around

FWIW, I went through a journey a couple years ago to try to define the term "software engineer." I notice there were A LOT of people just throwing code around or just copying and pasting random crap from stacktrace and aws demo code w/o understanding what it did. I think inherent to the "application of scientific knowledge" part of the definition is an implication there's a mental model where the engineer is manipulating abstractions in the model to get to a solution. I found this book useful (and short): https://academic.oup.com/book/591 https://academic.oup.com/book/591