Engineering vs Software Engineering

In the last issue of 'Engineering and Technology' magazine by the IET, I read a small article (I forgot the name of the author but I remember the topic). It was about the usage of the job title 'Engineer' within the software industry. The author had said that an Engineer should be a person who is involved in hardware design and manufacturing activities. In all the other industries such as 'Civil', 'Electronics', 'Mechanics', 'Aeronaughtics' etc. the tasks of an Engineer is related to designing hardware components. In contrast, the software industry has been mis-using the job title 'Engineer' for people who design software, which difers a lot from usual engineering processes. Hence, they should be called 'Software Designers' instead, he had further added.

I have been hearing these kinds of arguements time to time from various people I meet. The reasons I think for all these mis-understandings are;

1. Software industry has not matured enough or it has not aged well to define its standards.
2. Software Engineering is a totally different aspect of Engineering where people are new to the intangible properties of the product and its capabilities.

Because of its immatured nature, the people in this industry have started using many different job titles without standardizing/defining them in a proper way. This has lead to many problems and mis-understanding. However, I believe that the 'software engineering' would soon come under the 'umbrella of engineering' as the community become more aware about the issues nowadays.