Am a civil engineer working in tech now. I never felt like engineering was magical, we studied materials and stresses and tested stuff and built things.
While I know software engineers basically do the same things in a digital concept (hardware included) they are basically speaking arcane words that make the machine do things like conjure up images, transport information across the world at the speed of light.
Maybe fantasy writers should write more infrastructure into their stories for their wizards, like undersea cables or satellites built by the generations before
Software engineering is alchemy, except you’re often trying to create gold from lead for corporate interests. That being said, I enjoy the craft so much that despite being a corporate technomancer, I have still been able to pursue my own chemical marriage.
This is nicely said, saving this :)