Programmers vs. Engineers

"If you have done enough software projects, you must have figured out the pattern already. Programmers would sit down and start coding, before even understanding the requirements, let alone specifying how the system should work."

Erm. No. Nope.

I have never seen anyone start coding without knowing how their code should work and how it would interact with the other code, the rest of the project and at some point, other projects...

> Programmers would sit down and start coding, before even understanding the requirements, let alone specifying how the system should work.

Don't you think that's a bit of a generalization? I can tell you right now, lack of clear requirements and specifications does not directly correlate with lack of formal education in computer science.