Depends on the country. In some countries, it is a legal axiom (or at least identity).

For the other countries, though, arguing "some countries do it that way" is as persuasive as "some countries drive on the other side of the road." It's true, but so what? Why should we change to do it their way?

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JoshTriplett 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Depends on the country. In some countries, it is a legal axiom (or at least identity).

As I said, "That may be true in some jurisdictions, but it's not axiomatically or definitionally true.". The law is emphatically not an axiom, nor is it definitionally right or wrong, or correct or incorrect; it only defines what's legal or illegal.

When the article raised the question of whether "building software is an engineering discipline", it was very obviously not asking a question about whether the term 'engineering' is legally restricted in any particular jurisdiction.

	▲	SoftTalker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To my mind, the term "engineering discipline" implies something roughly analogous to Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering. There is no such rigorous definition for "software engineer" which normally is just a self-granted title meaning "I write code."