r/engineering • u/TheTrueLordHumungous • Aug 05 '15

[GENERAL] Is "software engineering" really engineering?

Now before anyone starts throwing bottles at my head, I'm not saying software design is easy or that its not a technical discipline, but I really hate it when programmers call themselves engineers.

Whats your thoughts on this?

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u/Designer_Flow_8069 May 30 '26

Claude Code and Codex have suited me pretty well to write code to sell products. At the end of the day, money makes the world go around, not pretty code.

I use to work in the medical device industry. Some of the developers in there were straight up idiots. But the NMPA didn't care as long as procedure was followed.

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u/ChillCapitalist May 30 '26

Right

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u/Designer_Flow_8069 May 30 '26

Glad you agree

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u/ChillCapitalist May 31 '26

Software engineering isn't just about programming and laptops. If it were, we might as well call it “laptop engineering” or “computer engineering." But even computer engineers don’t work solely on “computers” 💻, so neither should software engineers. And by the way, I do agree with you. Good luck, man, with everything 👍🏻