As you said, it changes too fast, probably all started by universities trying to label this "new thing" about computing and data; maybe because if you called CS to the theoretical background, the analog to the practical approach would be engineering? and if not CS, how do we label it? CStuff? CThings?, it turned into a marketing problem, who would pay to study CT? and how could we call the applied discipline. Similar thing happened with engineering in fact, even "hard" engineering is not about engines anymore (not all of them anyway) and if we get attached to etymology, with self driving and automatic control in cars, airplanes, etc. We cold say that "technically" has more to do with engines than Civil engineering, maybe the relation with hard sciences was only anecdotal, we based our technique to hard sciences because it was all we got, and we could also argue that some applied electronics was for a long time based in principles more related to math that the "hard" concept of physics, specially now with quantum computing, so is engineering actually related to math more than science? I don't know... I studied Industrial Engineering, is that an engineering? has math on it and works with algorithms related to physical things, instead of data we deal with products, workers, materials, etc. We used mathematical models to simulate, predict and optimize systems; we used the scientific method. Why math describing particles is more "tangible" than math describing processes or some machine behavior?, in fact the particle is the less "tangible" of them.
Lastly perhaps the relevant question is to go deeper, to ask what are words for?, I know, to basic, but probably in the lines of, to distinguish things, to identify them; in that case what should engineering mean?, what is relevant about it, what we are trying to differentiate from?, is relevant their connection to engines?, probably not, is important if is based in physics/chemistry? maybe, maybe that is backed-up with math is more important, physics are getting really intangible anyway, maybe is the scientific method what is relevant, and what we try to separate? is there a chance we confuse a software engineer with a mechanical engineer? could we get the wrong one for a job?, I think that the real problem is not Software Engineering in relation with other engineering, is SE with other "in-house" terms, like developer, programmer, coder, full stack dev, DevOps, even sysadmin, etc. There the "muddiness" can create confusion.
I don't know, naming is hard, right?
PS: we have too much new stuff and to few names and is particularly hard with intangible things, even physicist talk about waves when they talk about non-waves, spins to refer to a non-spinning thing, colors of particles where color has no meaning and don't get me started with quark names.
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As you said, it changes too fast, probably all started by universities trying to label this "new thing" about computing and data; maybe because if you called CS to the theoretical background, the analog to the practical approach would be engineering? and if not CS, how do we label it? CStuff? CThings?, it turned into a marketing problem, who would pay to study CT? and how could we call the applied discipline. Similar thing happened with engineering in fact, even "hard" engineering is not about engines anymore (not all of them anyway) and if we get attached to etymology, with self driving and automatic control in cars, airplanes, etc. We cold say that "technically" has more to do with engines than Civil engineering, maybe the relation with hard sciences was only anecdotal, we based our technique to hard sciences because it was all we got, and we could also argue that some applied electronics was for a long time based in principles more related to math that the "hard" concept of physics, specially now with quantum computing, so is engineering actually related to math more than science? I don't know... I studied Industrial Engineering, is that an engineering? has math on it and works with algorithms related to physical things, instead of data we deal with products, workers, materials, etc. We used mathematical models to simulate, predict and optimize systems; we used the scientific method. Why math describing particles is more "tangible" than math describing processes or some machine behavior?, in fact the particle is the less "tangible" of them.
Lastly perhaps the relevant question is to go deeper, to ask what are words for?, I know, to basic, but probably in the lines of, to distinguish things, to identify them; in that case what should engineering mean?, what is relevant about it, what we are trying to differentiate from?, is relevant their connection to engines?, probably not, is important if is based in physics/chemistry? maybe, maybe that is backed-up with math is more important, physics are getting really intangible anyway, maybe is the scientific method what is relevant, and what we try to separate? is there a chance we confuse a software engineer with a mechanical engineer? could we get the wrong one for a job?, I think that the real problem is not Software Engineering in relation with other engineering, is SE with other "in-house" terms, like developer, programmer, coder, full stack dev, DevOps, even sysadmin, etc. There the "muddiness" can create confusion.
I don't know, naming is hard, right?
PS: we have too much new stuff and to few names and is particularly hard with intangible things, even physicist talk about waves when they talk about non-waves, spins to refer to a non-spinning thing, colors of particles where color has no meaning and don't get me started with quark names.