Mathematics and computer sciences are hard sciences. However, people don't often see them that way because they're not "natural sciences", they are instead "fo

Mathematics and computer sciences are hard sciences. However, people don't often see them that way because they're not "natural sciences", they are instead "formal sciences", so empirical work is not required. As a software engineer, you might use formal semantics to verify code, or you might need relational algebra to design your databases, or you might need statistics to understand the performance of the systems you work with, et cetera. Computer programs have even grown to the level of complexity where we use empirical models to study them, and design them using simplified, scientific models. For example, memory usage. The way software engineers model memory usage seems broadly similar to the way a civil engineer would model loading. The fact that carpenters build houses does not diminish the accomplishment of engineers who build skyscrapers; the fact that novice programmers can build CRUD applications does not diminish the accomplishment of software engineers. The only reason that this is an issue today is because most people are old enough to remember when "software engineering" was not a thing.