>Nor can I agree that anyone should be called a “software engineer”.

Hello Tom,

Anyone? What if they truly are an engineer? And they are truly engineering software...such as system on a chip designs and multilayer circuit boards?

Or the engineer who is writing simulation software for testing chip designs?

I suppose those folks may consider the term software engineer to be beneath them :)

Don't you have a degree in engineering? That would qualify you to have an opinion on the matter <g>