Validity aside, it isn't an engineering discipline, that's right.

Programmers are important and do important work but programming doesn't make somebody a physician, or sheriff, or attorney, or congressman.

When control valves in a reactor don't appear to be having an effect you don't call the comp sci guy in to run diagnostics on the terminal, first, instead you call the engineers who manually seal the valves and shuts down the turbines to prevent coolant loss.