It seems to me that in your case the relevant part is engineering, the standards are the real thing and programming is there to support them. This is not the case in my experience, where programming involves creating a new web site, a new database schema, a new game. There is little to no engineering on these fields, every day you see a newfangled "architecture" or "framework" or "API". EE is a much more standards driven arena, CS is not, IMO.