I'm a self taught programmer with a engineering degree.

I never really did engineering as a career as my first job out of university was as a software developer.

What I remember from that time and why I think I picked up programming fairly easily was my engineering degree gave me the skills to think through a problem.

I never really had trouble planning out my software designs even though I had no formal training in that area.

So in that sense I agree that these two disciplines appear to be similar.

I put this down to the problem solving skills I learnt through my Engineering degree.