I'm simply going with the definition of true "engineering" taught to me as a software engineering major at university... and specifically that we don't do that

I'm simply going with the definition of true "engineering" taught to me as a software engineering major at university... and specifically that we don't do that formal definition of engineering. Of-course, other fields (mechanical, civil, etc) don't always follow all the formalities either, but there are ways of modelling that simply aren't available or aren't used by software engineers.