I was hoping that a more substantial point was going to be made than this piece of fluff. Here is the substantial point.
If you're building a skyscraper or a bridge, an engineer has to sign off on the design. If the design subsequently proves to be defective, said engineer is personally liable. In many places, calling yourself an engineer when you are not licensed to sign off on designs and be liable in this way is against the law.
We can debate whether or not extending this principle to software development is a good idea. What we can't debate is that software development does not currently work this way. You, the software developer, are not an engineer. If you think a design is bad, you do not have both the legal authority and responsibility to stand up, declare it so, and force the design to be changed to something saner.
But saying you're not an engineer because software projects don't succeed like projects done by real engineers - that's both silly and wrong.
It has already been extended into software development. Plenty of software projects have to be signed off in aerospace, automotive, telecoms, energy and defense.
In fact I'd be amazed if it did not extend into consumer electronics in large companies, e.g. Apple et al cannot risk bricking millions of phones with a bad update.
The point might be that there are thousands of badly run projects, just as there are in construction.
There have been rumblings over the past decade or two about quantifying a practice and study aimed towards turning software engineering into a capital-e Engineering discipline, but evidently they never really go anywhere.
That's what makes it a stupid point: it depends on a specific definition of engineer that is not used (and is not possible to use) with software engineering, and that definition is oriented around chartering/certification of the professional themselves.
That he buttons the essay up in such a self-serving way is just icing: taking "engineering" too literally for the context, then calling himself a gardener.
If you're building a skyscraper or a bridge, an engineer has to sign off on the design. If the design subsequently proves to be defective, said engineer is personally liable. In many places, calling yourself an engineer when you are not licensed to sign off on designs and be liable in this way is against the law.
We can debate whether or not extending this principle to software development is a good idea. What we can't debate is that software development does not currently work this way. You, the software developer, are not an engineer. If you think a design is bad, you do not have both the legal authority and responsibility to stand up, declare it so, and force the design to be changed to something saner.
But saying you're not an engineer because software projects don't succeed like projects done by real engineers - that's both silly and wrong.