I think the fact that Software Engineering not being regulated has been offset by the fact that the concept of open source code and open information (relative to other branches of engineering) pushes good practices to pretty much every programmer on the planet without asking (most of the time) and peer pressure is heavily against anyone who tries to sneak away or laze. I think software engineering is unique in being a collective of uncoordinated knowledge that self-heals and self-optimizes. All thanks to the open source movement and the n-number of tutorials online.