To be honest, I didn’t understand this question until I googled it and found out that there are many people who think Software Engineering should not be considered as Engineering but as a craft. I read a publication by Bill Curran, a guy who thinks that SE has a misnomer. Apparently, early practitioners of Software Engineering wanted to call it “Software Physics” but the term was already taken.
After reading some more posts and discovering that some of they had a point. I decided to first know more about Engineering itself, so I could find whether SE was Engineering or not.
I read some definitions and I found a video made by the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle. It explains in four minutes and in an easy to understand and enjoyable way. You can watch it bellow.
According to the IEEE computer society SE is “The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is, the application of engineering to software.”
As an engineering student I think Software Engineers are truly Engineers.
