So software engineering isn't engineering, either? I would imagine any civil engineer who actually knows what it takes to build a bridge would tend to agree, at least on the basis of the points you have put forward so far.
I bet if we fast forward 1000 years, you'd find that software engineering will have become as rigorous as what we have today in civil engineering.
How is that not like software engineering?
But in the software world, it seems the equivalent of the cold is a CRUD app, but still fails so often that it's newsworthily talked about when such a software project succeed!
This isn't evident at all. In software, every situation is novel, so there is no room for repeatable processes.
You can build a "bridge library" once and tweak it for each situation, but you never need to develop a rigorous process to build that library again.
this is the point i m contesting - that most situations aren't as novel as the stakeholders think it is. The failure happens because the assumption that it's novel is there!