Good engineers are professional engineers. A good engineer does a good job on what's expected on them.

A good engineer does not have to be a leet hacker, in the same way a good architect does not have to be a geeky concrete fanboy.

This is where you get attitudes like: "If you haven't been programming since you were six, you're rubbish and we don't want you."

I will take a programmer from age 6 over a dozen alleged “software engineers” performing “best practices” theater.

The former can deliver good software with less bugs, the latter might be able to, but are more likely to bikeshed endlessly, while being hamstrung by “best” practices that turn out to be inapplicable in a given domain, or even damaging.

Do wake me up when software engineering becomes a standardized practice that isn’t a mere cargo cult.

I swear, if I read one more comment about doctors and surgery and licensing I’m going to have to diverge on a rant exposing the multiple flaws in popular SE best practices.