The way programmers tend to default "engineer" to meaning "software engineer" bothers me sometimes too. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised by a mechanical engineering blog doing the same thing. We all focus on our little corners of the world, and if software has it worse than mechanical it's just because mechanical engineers are forced to work with other disciplines more often. I'm pretty sure I've seen over- and under- engineers in mechanical work too, it's the same all over.
For whatever it's worth re: "engineering discipline", my feeling is that the parts of software engineering that really need to take their work very seriously mostly do. For example, the occasional articles on the NASA software that went into the space shuttle. On the flip side, if the mechanical engineers I worked with could build/test/release new designs the way software engineers can we would have been as sloppy and more. The reason physical things are more carefully designed is just that the edit/compile/test cycle is so much longer and more expensive, not that one is a "serious engineering discipline" and the other isn't.
Yet, software engineering doesn't require a degree and no minimum bar on both depth and breadth of knowledge required.
The jobspecs for "senior web engineer" with 3 years of Stack Overflow copypasting experience are an example.
True, you can make it far by faking it. Very far in some cases. But number of times I have run into developers that only landed the job because of the habit you describe, I can count on one hand. Was there a particular event that shaded your world view so?
To me, it's a fairly myopic culture. One of my friends, who has a Ph.D. in civil engineering and is a professor at Stanford has to do the same thing "oh no I'm not an engineer in the way you meant". It's insulting to all the other types of engineers out there (civil, mechanical, electrical, aeronautical, bme) who are somehow excluded from the definition engineer when you enter the Valley or software circles. No other engineering subtype abuses the language this way. It's even more mind boggling because no software engineer has a PE, which in some countries (not the US) is the only way you can call yourself an engineer.
As a whole, I think abusing the language is insulting to the diversity of engineers out there. While software engineering is probably the highest growth branch, that doesn't mean the other branches are just as relevant. In university, we never used the word engineering to mean just "electrical engineering", we actually used it when we were talking about the whole universe of engineers.
The funny thing is now that I've transitioned to software engineer, it feels good to be finally be able to say "Yes I'm an engineer."
I think there are a couple of states where you are not allowed (by law) to use engineer unless you are a P.E. but there are industrial exemptions, which muddy the waters. As compared to "Professional Engineer", which is don't use it if you don't have a license in the U.S. state where you are offering engineering services.
I had no idea that this is a sensitive topic. I personally have family members that are civil engineers and understand the difficulty with acquiring a PE. I went ahead and modified the title.
I won't get into whether or not it's fair to call call "developers" "engineers", but I do make the distinction in the first paragraph that the article refers to software engineers. In addition, velocity, bug count, and lines of code are all software terms. I can't imagine anyone thinking this is referring to any other type of engineering.
Agile, for example, is another general term that has a fairly specific meaning in this context.
If you overhear someone in a park say "Oh, you guys are agile? What's your average velocity?" would you assume they are talking about athletics or software development?
He even apologizes for going slightly meta and off-topic. If anything, complaining about this point distracts from post content and fosters even less interesting discussion.
I find the fact that this blog refers to software engineering practices as if they apply to all engineering disciplines to be a little jarring and best and misleading at worst.
I wouldn't expect a mechanical engineering blog to have an article "Types of Engineers" that only discusses mechanical engineering.
I refuse to not call software an engineering discipline (I believe it is or at least strives to be) but even so I make sure to quantify my statements by putting the word "software" in-front of "engineer."