> Pete McBreen and Paul Graham who say that we are not engineers because engineering cannot apply to our domain. Engineers work on predictable projects with a lot of upfront planning and rigorous requirements

This strikes me as a really silly argument, it has an element of “we’re too good for other engineering disciplines “. I don’t think it’s difference in our specifications, software engineering does still apply the same underlying principles and intents in solving problems.

Admittedly, software engineering has some way to go to reach the same levels of guarantees and rigour, but the fundamentals are there.