My point in the article is also that we can and need to do better (maybe not clearly explained ;), but it is my belief that using the "engineering" metaphor will hold us back. A lot of people, maybe even most, believe that we should improve ourselves by becoming "more like engineers". For example by using Formal Methods etc. This might be true for a small number of projects, but it is my believe that for most software projects, as software developers we need to become "less like engineers".

"Engineering is the application of technical knowledge to solve problems.", therefore, engineers try to gain as much technical knowledge as possible to solve their problems. In my opinion software development should evolve to require less and less technical knowledge, that way we can spend more effort on the real problem: mapping the problem domain into a clear software representation. Developing software should evolve closer towards the human side, and not towards the technical side. And so far, programming languages for example have evolved in that direction.