I personally like to compare it to building houses.
Programming is laying the bricks, the cables, etc. Basically doing the actual building.
Software engineering as in other engineering disciplines is more concerned with making sure everything actually works and fulfills certain standards of quality. The planning, design and architecture part of the work.
For the last decades the person doing the programming and engineering were usually the same, but they are more and more drifting apart with more engineering focused roles like software architect.
In much of the world engineer is also a protected title that requires formal education like with doctors or lawyers. The US is using it pretty inflationary.
Shades of the 1980s and prior decades! In the 1980s, I worked in the aerospace division of a Fortune 5 company. A headhunter called me up, was chatting, and asked me what I did. I said I was a "programmer". Silence on the other end and then, "Are there any people who design programs there?" "Umm, yeah, we all do." I was book-aware of this distinction in previous decades, but this was the first time I had encountered it in the real world (of a headhunter). I see that we "programmers" are still regarded as being like the streetsweepers in Victorian London, sweeping out a path in the manure and mud for the software engineers! :) (We had software architects back then.)
Programming is laying the bricks, the cables, etc. Basically doing the actual building.
Software engineering as in other engineering disciplines is more concerned with making sure everything actually works and fulfills certain standards of quality. The planning, design and architecture part of the work.
For the last decades the person doing the programming and engineering were usually the same, but they are more and more drifting apart with more engineering focused roles like software architect.
In much of the world engineer is also a protected title that requires formal education like with doctors or lawyers. The US is using it pretty inflationary.