Pilots generally do have some level of engineering background, in order to be able to understand possible in-flight issues, but they're not analogous to software engineers. They're analogous to software operators. Software engineers are analogous to aerospace engineers, who absolutely do understand the internals of how turbines work because they're the people who design turbines.
The problem with software development as a discipline is its all so new we don't have proper division of labor and professional standards yet. It's like if the people responsible for modeling structural integrity in the foundation of a skyscraper and the people who specialize in creating office furniture were all just called "construction engineers" and expected to have some common body of knowledge. Software systems span many layers and domains that don't all have that much in common with each other, but we all pretend we're speaking the same language to each other anyway.
I really like your analogy, I’m stealing it. As a pilot(devops) during interviews I’m often asked deep aeronautics internals (some graphs/tree question) about whatever plane that aeronautic (software) engineer built and it’s always annoyed me that that’s a game I have to play. Same realm but completely different fields, that are somewhat and yet closely intertwined. The frequency of this is quite common
I sometimes hate joke/fantasize about nailing a SE candidate with an obscure BPG or esoteric DNS question and then being outwardly disappointed in his response, watching him realize he’s going to lose this job over something I found completely reasonable to ask, but ultimately entirely useless to his position
It doesn't help that most of it is completely abstract and intangible. You can immediately spot the difference between a skyscraper and a chair, but not many can tell the difference between a e2e encrypted chat app and a support chat app. It's an 'app' but they are about as different between a chair and a skyscraper in architecture and systems.
Software has been around for longer than aeroplanes
Developers who can only configure AWS are software operators using a product, not software engineers. There’s nothing wrong with that but if no one learns to build software, we’ll all be stuck funding Mr Bezos and his space trips for a long time.
The problem with software development as a discipline is its all so new we don't have proper division of labor and professional standards yet. It's like if the people responsible for modeling structural integrity in the foundation of a skyscraper and the people who specialize in creating office furniture were all just called "construction engineers" and expected to have some common body of knowledge. Software systems span many layers and domains that don't all have that much in common with each other, but we all pretend we're speaking the same language to each other anyway.