Wow, that was a screed, (a worthy one) and yeah, an engineering degree should be special IMO, as perhaps a (pure) Math one. should also be. We have a tendency to regard you lesser, in self defense,, but that professional responsibility is significant, a more elegant weapon from a more civilized age. I do apologize,, the steam age thing was out of line (but meant with heart, trains rock, and IMO is where 'engineering' started) has it's roots.

As a software developer who also has a background in civil engineering and an EIT, I rue the fact that NCEES got rid of the software engineering PE exam before I had a chance to take it.

ultimately about critical thought and solving problems/achieving functionality with limited resources

I find in software engineering that the resources tend to be ample, it's the capacity for critical thought that's constrained. Predicting the users, predicting the future, predicting what users will do and want to do in the future... get that right and you've got the requirements for good software. Without good requirements, your software can build all kinds of fancy bridges to nowhere.

At one point, about 10 years after graduating with my Masters' in Computer Engineering, I looked around about getting a PE license and the reality was: it had (and still has as far as I can tell) no value in the software field. I have a BS in EE, and if I wanted to start signing drawings for building electrical systems, a PE is just the thing for that. Around here, you need to apprentice under a PE for a time to get them to certify you as a PE, and the PEs we have aren't in software, they wouldn't know how to evaluate your software skills or professionalism. Reminds me of high school where they recognized that about 6 of the students knew far more about computer programming than the best (and only) teacher we had for it, so we were put in an "independent study" class to learn what we could from the equipment that various local businesses had donated to the school. Even as a practicing EE in the biomedical device design field, there was really no value to the PE license - for similar cultural reasons: the best biomedical engineers are in a different world from our existing PEs.

you will also be held accountable if something goes wrong.

I graduated before the internet. I had researched local companies the old fashioned way, and the first one I drove to to ask about a job, when I got there the parking lot was empty and there was a padlock and chain on the door. Guess I need to go to #2 on the list... turns out they (a pacemaker company) had been reprocessing faulty devices and shipping them with inadequate testing after rework, leading to the devices going bad shortly after surgical implant, requiring additional surgery for replacement. A whole chain of technicians, engineers, and executive management were culpable for the expense and risk they were causing for the users of their pacemakers. Other than the FDA shutting them down, there was a bunch of blow-hard talk about accountability, fines and jail time for management, but neither even came to a court hearing. Our system is, frankly, still very wild-west in terms of accountability for engineers in emerging fields.

it’s critical that we decide how software engineers play a role in preventing those things and how we hold them accountable when they don’t.

Agreed, but software has already had life-safety-critical and massively financially impactful roles in society for 50+ years now, and I see precious little progress toward formal accountability.

Does the same argument apply to calling janitors custodians "sanitation engineers"? I've seen that some places.

Like, if the word "custodian" is too offensive, then maybe it's just because the job sucks and comes with stigma, and anything you call it is going to sound derogatory after a few years...

I get that it's a critical job, and the people in those roles should be treated with dignity and respect like everyone else. The social stigma is wrong, for sure. But simply changing the title doesn't solve anything...

empirically derived principles and best practices exist and that software engineering is a thing.

The thing I find most vexing about "software engineering" is that the majority of it comes down to sociology/psychology more than it does science. People make mistakes. They mis-communicate, under-specify, assume, overlook, forget, and screw up.

Programmers practice somewhere between lawyers, authors and graphic artists, and other than the graphic art side of their endeavors, most people never "read" their product. The most valuable principles of software engineering have nothing to do with the complexity of sort algorithms, logic trees or other abstract concepts they were teaching in "computer science" back in the 1980s. The most valuable principles come down to: how do you manage the problems inherent in the situation of human beings writing a bunch of code that almost nobody ever sees which can be fraught with problems that almost nobody will detect until years after the original authors have all but forgotten what they did?