The relationship between Software Engineering (60% of the most used languages are "scripting" languages) and "running cable," is that they are both concerned with creating direct utility to people. I fully understand and respect that the completely theoretical side of CS might seem more difficult and therefore superior (?) to engineering, just as coding might seem more advanced than "running cable," but I could never see dismissing "running cable" as inferior to writing code. I would also point out that the top 5 U.S. CS programs, for whatever misguided reason, are all very much interested in creating direct utility to people -- through HCI, Software Development, even bad code: http://hci.stanford.edu/research/opportunistic/
No one said that running cable was inferior to writing code. I spent some good afternoons running cable at my house. But it's not computer science. Would you ask any prominent computer scientist about their opinion running cable? At best maybe a EE professor to understand signal dropoff, but it's just not computer science.
It's not about superior/inferior. It's if it is part of CS. Running cable isn't. Writing scripts generally isn't. That's it.
