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I wonder what % of readers here do programming in their day to day. Definitely a good amount but I don't think it is the majority.
Depends on your definition of "programming." If you mean "putting code together" then maybe even more than half. If you mean "engineering" then a very small fraction.
That makes it even more subjective!! What's your definition of engineering?
https://www.nae.edu/19579/19582/21020/221074/221278/Presiden...

I would also argue that "engineering" as a discipline, as part of the "operations" clause in the link above requires a close observation of the economics of any proposed solution. In other words, engineers have to worry about costs.

If your definition is "The systematic application of scientific knowledge in developing and applying technology." I think we can agree.
FWIW, I went through a journey a couple years ago to try to define the term "software engineer." I notice there were A LOT of people just throwing code around or just copying and pasting random crap from stacktrace and aws demo code w/o understanding what it did.

I think inherent to the "application of scientific knowledge" part of the definition is an implication there's a mental model where the engineer is manipulating abstractions in the model to get to a solution.

I found this book useful (and short): https://academic.oup.com/book/591

I have no idea how to code, yet have boiler plate GPT code in production. No interest in learning, it's not for me. I like this site for the diversity of topics and information.
Actually it's more like to "Try to play the wise guy in Hacker News in any category you can possibly imagine and someone will definitely know more than you and write an essay proving their point while making you feel really worthless for just breathing" sub-Reddit lol!