I hate being called a 'software engineer', as it's pretty much nothing like what I do.
Ironically, having studied several engineering disciplines, I feel precisely opposite of this. I want people to understand that building reliable software is an engineering effort.
In my work, I try to balance competing forces and constraints to design reliable, elegant, modular, well-tested components at low cost. Just like practically every other kind of engineering I've ever seen.
And that's one way of doing it that resembles engineering.
Just as engineering can resemble programming, programming can resemble engineering. But trying to imitate what engineers do limits what you can do as a programmer. Programmers also work on multiple levels of abstraction in a way that I imagine to be somewhat different from engineers.
Ironically, having studied several engineering disciplines, I feel precisely opposite of this. I want people to understand that building reliable software is an engineering effort.
In my work, I try to balance competing forces and constraints to design reliable, elegant, modular, well-tested components at low cost. Just like practically every other kind of engineering I've ever seen.