>If you think it is easy, you haven't done anything worthwhile, sorry.

LOL this is an insult. Let me put it this way, you're right but I can bet you haven't done anything worthwhile either. Anything you've built as a software engineer, I can 100% build as well. There is nothing you can do that I can't as a pure software engineer. In fact likely everyone on this thread can build anything you've built and likely do better as well.

But let me be clear. If you programmed CAD software that can simulate an entire boeing 747 flying through the air... that is a feat that not many software engineers can do. But this doesn't count because it's combining two engineering disciplines (even a PRB renderer doesn't count.

Something like an OS would be an example of a pure software engineering approach.

Also I never said software is easy. I said it's the "easiest." Big difference.

IN ALL of engineering it's highly unlikely for all engineering disciplines to be equally hard. highly highly unlikely. All engineering disciplines must overall stand at some general point in the challenge spectrum. You could say the answer is too complicated to answer as there are jobs in say chemical engineering that are much harder than certain jobs in mechanical engineering and vice versa but regardless a GENERALITY of hardness exists.

What engineering discipline in your mind is than the easiest if not software engineering? Tell me. What other engineering discipline to practitioners don't require any schooling are hired without a degrees and you can easily form a start up around with less effort? Why don't we see a bunch of spaceX startups but see a ton of startups building some stupid dashboard for a niche?

I'll give you a hint. Because when you compare rocket science versus computer science, one of these fields is GENERALLY easier.

> I can see how it looks easy and that it is "moving in circles". It is still a relatively new discipline, and as such, still finding a lot of the process, tools, and techniques that other disciplines have developed. Plus Moore's Law and its ilk change things constantly.

How it looks? I've been in this industry for years. I can assure you it's not a "look" thing. It's a TRUE thing. The industry does move in circles.

There's no mathematical theory on how to organize code so we make shit up and call them "patterns" but there's ultimately no actual proof that one pattern is better than another and we're not 100% clear about the tradeoffs diving in. That's why the industry moves in circles. It oscillates between two solutions and it can't figure out which is better.

For what use case is a monolith better or a microservice? What software design pattern is actually better for what use case? Can you plug it into an formal equation and optimize the best design pattern to use for a certain case? You can't... because no theory exists.

But no theory needs to exist. You can hack a half assed solution and that's really all that's needed. Even if you don't "hack" a solution together nobody can really prove whether your "designed" solution is better. A stupid engineer can design something and think he's a genius but without theory nobody can prove whether his design is the best one possible.

And that is why software is easy. Anything goes. It's like building 1/32 scale model of the eiffel tower out of toothpicks. Is there a theory behind it? No. Is it easy to do? No. Can anybody do it? Given enough time, Yes.