Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the article isn't arguing that, the article seems to be arguing we are something more than engineers. But we are not even engineers, let alone more. There are some people active in the production of software that would qualify as engineers but that's a tiny fraction and they're not going to be found too far from medical devices and aerospace.
Aerospace software engineer here. :-) I feel perfectly content to deem my work as "engineering". I can understand why someone quickly whipping up a small web application (which is not to imply that all web applications are quickly whipped up, nor that all web applications are small) might reasonably feel that their work is not engineering. So since I've also done quick little web applications, what do I think the dif…
I think a lot of "software engineers" fall under what in another industry would be called a "technician" which muddies the discussion.
Although I'm not sure I'd even put the bar as high as medical, financial, and military.
A sufficiently large web application can indeed require a level of discipline often associated with engineering. The amount of process and control when you have 50 people working on a project and millions of users is very different than the lone hacker in their garage.
You also implied that in engineering making a tiny change can be a year worth of paperwork. While not as extreme as that, if your handling credit card data for instance there is a lot of paperwork, documentation, and verification that goes into pushing a change live.