Let's look at the numbers. Texas and Florida have a PE test for Software Engineers. In Texas the numbers are (see [1]):

2014: 6 people took the test and 2 passed.

2015: 5 people took the test and 2 passed.

2016: 3 people took the test and 2 passed.

Only California has more programmers than Texas, see [2], and it appears that there are 6 Professional Engineers at most in Texas in the field of Software Engineering out of over 20,000 programmers.

My conclusion is that the title of PE in Software Engineering is currently pretty meaningless in the US.

[1] https://engineers.texas.gov/exam_passfail.htm

[2] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151131.htm

Several factors of this:

* Demand, since it is a new exam very few companies will be looking for a PE in software engineering.

* Supply, it's not just taking the test (starting with the FE) but you also need to have worked under a PE in the field (hah!) or had relevant experience to waive that requirement (this is a lot more vague and determined by the state). I would wager that most with relevant experience in the field are also not wanting to bust ass to study for a PE exam that no employers are demanding.

I'll be interested to see how long it takes for this to be more common. When I graduated (computer engineering) the consensus was that unless we knew our job would require a PE in the future that we didn't bother even taking the FE exam.

That's fine, but I think that the parent was responding to this:

> ABET (the engineering accreditation society in the US), doesn't have "Software Engineering" as a valid discipline.

Which can be true or false independently of how meaningful the title is.

The Computer Engineering degree I have is from an ABET program, it was pretty even on CS/EE. No regrets, except for the times the hardware guys act like I'm just a software guy and the software guys act like I don't know anything about software because I'm a hardware guy. XD