You're conflating software engineering with mechanical engineering. It's not the same as mechanical engineering, or even medical school. You can absolutely lea

You're conflating software engineering with mechanical engineering. It's not the same as mechanical engineering, or even medical school. You can absolutely learn all of software engineering, inside and out, without a formal education. All the gravity applied to software that peoples' lives depend on? It can be designed, developed and debugged with or without a formal education. Almost every argument in this thread bears a similarity to yours, but software engineering is not the same as traditional engineering. Comparing it to trades or crafts which demand physical inspection of a skillset and an in person mentorship is not valid. EDIT: Upon closer inspection of your comment, it seems as though your position is that software engineering should not be called engineering at all, because it does not require the same rigor as the other disciplines you mentioned during training. If that's the case, I agree with you. I take issue with people demanding that a title be tied to education when education is not demonstrably required for the skillset...but I also think "engineer" isn't necessarily an appropriate term for what "software engineers" do.