Engineering was my ‘day job’. The stuff that puts food on the table and a roof over your head.
Engineering is not exactly what you think. PEO – the Ontario regulator of the practice of engineering – ties itself in knots trying to come up with an all-inclusive definition of engineering which a) isn’t a circular definition and b) will capture all future things that should (in their opinion) be the exclusive preserve of engineering, e.g. nanotechnology, so that the practitioners can be subject to licensing, discipline, etc. Good luck, guys.
For the rest of us, the best description of engineering I ever came across was from Henry Petroski – an engineer and prolific writer (readable, too) – who wrote:
‘engineering is the art and science of the manipulation of the materials and forces of nature’.