Indeed, to use the title "Engineer" one has to earn it, by taking an university degree in Informatics Engineering and having the respective assemment.

> Informatics Engineering

Coding isn't and never will be Engineering.

While they might be true to some extent, I argue there are lots of Engineering Principles that should be taught and required for coding, before call themselves Engineers.

Software Development right now has a little too much BroScience.

Got into programming because it was fun and interesting. I’ve watched what was “correct” change many times over the years. Or every few months months in JavaScript land.

Thought of being told what is correct is just wrong. It would crush so many people. So much innovation would be stifled.

Had a test question in college asking what is better, white on black or black on white for text. Knew I was wasting my time with “formal” education.

I agree. But it isn't being right or wrong as in other engineering discipline, where there are scientific evidence for those facts.

The principles I was thinking of is the act of trade offs, cost, performance, time and TCO. And it isn't about which set of trade offs is right, it is about knowingly and justify those trade offs. Throughput Vs Latency, CPU vs Memory etc. A lot of these seems to be learned while they are on the job and from mistakes. I wish there are more of these thoughts being taught.

If what one understands by coding is laying bricks and doing plumbing, surely.

The vast majority of programmers don't rise to the professionalism of a plumber.

One more reason not to be allowed to self entitle themselves as Engineer.

Unfortunately some people are happy to taint the profession.

> your gate-keeping

Yep, that's _exactly_ what the "I made a website last weekend, so programming isn't hard, programmers just pretend it's hard" types say.