What is a "real engineer?" A railroad worker?

Someone who is licensed by the government to call themselves an Engineer, and is personally financially and criminally liable for any harm caused by defects in the things they design.

Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem: which came first: the license or the profession?

The profession came first. And then licensure was added to make sure that bridges and buildings didn't fail all the time and kill people.

HNers often launder their desperate want of institutional and social clout through the fantasy that there’s some societal view of what a Real Engineer is.

Usually out of anger over how easy it is for a smart person to become a skilled software engineer without jumping through the same unnecessary and expensive institutional hoops as OP.

So, here we go again with the hurt egos.