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“It’s not real engineering if someone can’t get hurt” seems like a strange definition to me.

That's because it is a strange definition.

If you work on the software in a self driving system in a car, that makes you an engineer. If you're working on software for a space satellite with no occupants... that's not an engineer?

Well, the failure of a satellite would definitely result in harm to property and economic interests, so it sounds like you would still be an engineer in that case.

Dropping customer's database would indeed cause a lot of harm

Agreed. Seems like the definition might actually be wide enough to count the vast majority of software developers as engineers.

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