Those terms really aren’t interchangeable over here. At all. (NL). For the reasons I listed above. “Developer” (or “ontwikkelaar” in Dutch) is monkey get instructions, monkey do things. A software engineer would get a request for something, research and figure out the solution, then build it. Source: I’m a software engineer.

Define "engineer" in a way that accurately describes what you think is an "engineer" while simultaneously excluding software engineers.

All software in existence is engineered. To write software is by definition engineering. It is something that is devised by someone. Liability has nothing to do with the term engineer or the act of engineering, it’s not a part of the definition or history of the word.

What I feel like you’re referring to is a “Professional engineering license” as it’s known in the states, which is something entirely unrelated to the act of engineering as a whole. That’s a licensure invented long after the fall of the Roman Empire and it’s that licensure, not the word “engineer” which incurs the liability you’re talking about.

You’re confused because like I said, the organization(s) that are responsible for that licensure picked a bad term for it, because it’s too similar to the word “Engineer” which doesn’t inherently have anything to do with it. If they had coined a more concise, specific term related to what they do, like Surgeon, they wouldn’t have this problem.

I went to an engineering school and graduated without the engineer title. I then started working in the software field and got a title of software engineer. I have people I've talked to about the title of engineer and how they have to take multiple tests and curriculums for that title. I only bring that up to say I think I know what you're going for but as I see things, they are a bit different.

I feel a lot of engineer titles are based on hard math/physics/chemistry of this universe. That makes a lot of things well researched, investigated, and (depending on your view) semi-stable in how things behave. We've been learning and expanding on this physical world for centuries.

Now with software engineering we're learning all the ways that we can build/create/destroy things that are in a "virtual space". What is interacted with doesn't necessarily conform to the physical universe. These are things that technically exist in those electronic pulses/signals but that feels more like computer engineering vs software engineering. Anyway, these non-physical designs don't pose an immediate risk to the life of someone in the physical space so they don't have the same creed and oath like the other professions. I feel we're in the changing of titles in the future because software is forever integrating itself in our lives and we're learning how much it can impact us physically as it's more tied to our lives.

Just like electrical engineer may not have been a protected title in the past (as an example as we learned how electricity affected us) and other disciplines now affect our physical space, we're on the precepts of software engineering affecting us. We still may be years or decades out but remember that other engineering fields had their infancy