You can only call yourself an Engineer under specific circumstances:
1) You follow a well defined and repeatable process
2) You are able to measure progress
3) You have predictable results
4) You are capable of adapting to requirements change
5) You follow a standard of some sorts (coding style, organization, etc)
6) You provide thorough documentation
People who don't adhere to these principals are just developers/programmers. If you just set out and hack on some project, then you are not engineering something. A lot of engineers hack/develop/program on their free time, but as a professional on a professional project they adhere to these principals (and therefore are engineering).
There are a lot of people in this world who call themselves engineers without actually being an engineer. "Customer Service Engineer"... what are you actually engineering? In software in particular, there's a lot of people who just don this title because it sounds more impressive ("Systems Engineer" instead of just calling themselves an Admin)... but if you speak with them about their process, etc... it becomes clear they just hack on something until is works (sort of). That's not engineering; that's not a well defined and repeatable process that one can follow every time and produce predicable results. They aren't able to measure their progress other than a best-guess.
1) You follow a well defined and repeatable process
2) You are able to measure progress
3) You have predictable results
4) You are capable of adapting to requirements change
5) You follow a standard of some sorts (coding style, organization, etc)
6) You provide thorough documentation
People who don't adhere to these principals are just developers/programmers. If you just set out and hack on some project, then you are not engineering something. A lot of engineers hack/develop/program on their free time, but as a professional on a professional project they adhere to these principals (and therefore are engineering).
There are a lot of people in this world who call themselves engineers without actually being an engineer. "Customer Service Engineer"... what are you actually engineering? In software in particular, there's a lot of people who just don this title because it sounds more impressive ("Systems Engineer" instead of just calling themselves an Admin)... but if you speak with them about their process, etc... it becomes clear they just hack on something until is works (sort of). That's not engineering; that's not a well defined and repeatable process that one can follow every time and produce predicable results. They aren't able to measure their progress other than a best-guess.