Okay, I will take the bait. I have worked for over 20 years as a systems engineer on large, complex systems involving sensors, software, computers and various kinds of hardware. Of all of the programmers that ever worked for me, I would only say that 1 out of 5 could technically qualify as engineers. By this, I mean that they were able to lead the development and specification of requirements, designs, prototypes, interfaces, databases, computer architectures, operating systems, user interfaces, algorithms, test methods, etc. all while understanding the cost implications of all of it. And, they were able to work with engineers in other disciplines throughout the process. Those folks were software engineers, not programmers.