Wow, so, Hacker News... didn't see that coming. Thanks for the comments, good and bad, folks.

One thing I certainly agree with: Regular physical engineering isn't entirely free of many of the problems I mention with software engineering, but the ability to understand and plan more effectively does appear to be there. The complexity in physical engineering does seem to be a little more tangible. I know a few civil and mechanical engineers, so I'm not plucking this from my behind ;-)

In terms of the definition of engineering, and the argument that software engineering isn't "engineering", I was taught this way back at university (City Uni, London), in their Centre for Software Reliability, and it's something I've largely agreed with. However, I think it was mainly used as a warning mechanism for newbie software "engineers" like me, to let us know that what we do is significantly different from other forms of engineering, in terms of the rigour. Perhaps it still deserves the title, but I guess that's a longer discussion.