I imagine the people who say that would like a more people-facing job (like, I dunno, maybe a DJ) rather than a computer-facing one. They don't necessarily imagine being a "real" engineer as an alternative to being a programmer, they put them both in the same category.

Not the ones I dealt with.

Mechanical Engineer: I build real things that I can touch!

Electrical Engineer: I get to play with oscilloscopes, and do soldering!

You get the idea.

I think this is because as students, a lot of engineering work is either labs, or on paper. They don't realize how much dependent on computers professional engineering work is.