No dogs were harmed in the making of this app

if you want to cut a hole in your wall to put in a window, it could be as easy as cutting a hole and putting in a window. Or, it could be that it's a "load bearing" wall, and you need to put a wide I-beam over the new window to safely redistribute/bear the load that the formerly intact wall was carrying. Or, you could have chosen a spot on the wall that has a column/pillar that's holding the roof up. Probably you'd choose a different spot, but if wanted that spot you could hire some engineers to figure out a new set of "cantilevers" or "flying buttresses" or (i'm not this type of engineer, I'm just throwing around words).

As the work you do becomes more and more dangerous to more and more people, you need somebody with higher levels of certification/licensure to approve the plan.

an electrician, who has a license, is not an engineer, but a good electrician could become one if she wanted, it would require study and exam passing. Some electrical work an electrician is allowed to do, they can "self certify", but the city might spot inspect it. The next level of complexity they perform the work, but a building inspector needs to inspect. The next level of complexity, the plans need to be certified and approved in advance.

I'm sort of making this up, piecing it together how steam fitting is done (that's mechanical engineering), how air handling is done (also mechanical engineering), plumbing, etc. But this is the general scheme.

some of this is legacy disputes left over from the 19th century. When they were inventing electrical circuits, everybody was an engineer and everybody could do everything, and people just invented stuff on the spot and tried it. After enough people died, it was decided we needed standards. And slowly a white collar/blue collar sort of distinction started to emerge, for work that required calculus vs work that requires knowledge of lots of specific requirements.

Calculus people design cars and planes with smooth sleek shapes, but those items can't be constructed without the other type of engineer saying "hey, that's not strong enough"

Yes, there are a lot of "developers". But there are also software engineers, even if our engineering craft is less-well developed by the standards of civil engineering or mechanical engineering. I understand engineering organizations (like those in Canada) who oppose the use of the term "software engineer" because there's no common code of practice or standards in the same way that those who wear the iron ring claim is incorrect.

I think that we, as a profession, need a code of ethics (and the ACM has a good one, https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/) and the application of software in certain cases should absolutely be regulated the same way that the various physical engineering practices are (healthcare, AI, finance, legal applications) so that there are consequences for the businesses and potentially the software engineers involved with those businesses when they cause harm (see sentencing guideline software in the US; see the contract that developed the Royal Mail "audit" software that could never work as advertised; see the rampant fraud that is crypto; see the abuse of generative models to software-wash copyright violations).

But the lack of regulatory bodies does not mean that there's not a practice of engineering involved, it just means that there's no regulatory body that governs said practice.