Then I dug deeper in Javascript, reading every book I could find until I knew all the pitfalls of the language firstclass functions, global namespacing, scopes, etc...Still did not feel like an engineer.
Dug into Objective-C (that's right...I skipped C) and struggled for three months to build my first app and launch it in the App Store (mostly because re-wrote it over and over not understanding the Core Data model issues I was having. Was I an engineer yet...NOT.
That's right, I skipped C. So, I went back and got into the C book and everything I could find on design patterns, etc.
One year in, trying to really build an app that does not suck and really get close to the metal with some assembly (yes, I know, I have been working backwards!) And do I consider myself an engineer now...? Kind of. Not a good one if I am (despite being a "hellava engineer" graduate from GaTech).
I may not consider myself one for the rest of the year. But that's me. I wish I had her feel for what she is. She posted to HN and I didn't so I give her props for that.
At face value this assessment feels very unfair. Where do you draw the line? Experience -- is a year not enough? Deliverables -- is YumHacker not enough? Education -- is it lack of formal training that separates the engineer from the coder?
Is it the ability to build non-trivial software systems that makes a software engineer? And we should rely on whose definition of "non-trivial" to assess her engineering ability in that case?
I'm not saying you're wrong in stating she isn't a software engineer, but I doubt you possess the knowledge of her ability required to make such an assessment with any degree of validity.