>But it seems the majority of working software engineers, and even a good chunk of electronics designers, will spend their time dealing mainly with things desig

>But it seems the majority of working software engineers, and even a good chunk of electronics designers, will spend their time dealing mainly with things designed by other people. Often resulting in building things for 'customers' (internal or external or even ones self) which result in a complaint that you built the thing they asked for, not the thing they need. There is occasional grateful acknowledgement that the only reason they now know what they need is because they got what they asked for, but usually its somehow your fault you got it wrong... "Computer Science" as a term has always felt like a misnomer to me. Its a mash-up of building on whats already known (or assumed) and also exploration by trying things out. It lacks the rigor of the 'hard' sciences - hardly anyone writes mathematical proofs proving their computing is correct let alone optimal. But I agree with you in general. Because you're continually 'building'/creating stuff with a reasonably quick feedback loop, rather than measuring/proving whether your idea is valid or not which can take up to or more than a whole career does make computing seem warm/cozy.