Comment by godelski
3 days ago
If I start calling "bananas" "apples" then I devalue the meaning of the word "apple". You can't differentiate which I'm referring to.
If I start calling "bananas" "apples" the price at the store doesn't change.
I think you don't understand what the word "value" means. You understand one meaning, but it has more than one.
> If I start calling "bananas" "apples" then I devalue the meaning of the word "apple". You can't differentiate which I'm referring to.
In French, potatoes are called what translates to English as "apple of the earth". Nobody confuses a pomme de terre with an apple, because nobody calls a potato an apple without the adjective attached.
That's what the additional adjective as part of the title is for; like how apples and potatoes are vaguely related in that they're both plant-based food but are otherwise entirely different; turning "software engineer" into a compound term that has the extra word is specifically to differentiate it from expectations of it not having the extra word.
Software engineering is legitimately engineering going by the etymological meaning of engineering; but it's not really one going by some of the other (mostly orthogonal) things we've layered onto the term in many contexts over the years. It's creation through ingenuity. It has as much claim to the word as part of its title as any other usage of the word does.