Related to your point would be an argument that software engineering is more productive when treated as a "hard" science (which I take to mean something like "rigorous justification of all steps" or "clear derivation from principle").
I don't think that's true at all, as evidenced by pretty much every successful software product ever (including the early relational databases, I should add) but would be curious to see the counterargument.
Software is a complex beast with multiple aspects. The UI design can Bree taken seriously but is no hard science. Many interesting parts just can't relate to hard science, even where you have algorithms. But when handling facts data you have the possibility to ground yourself on hard science, and should. It would be a stupid crime to build a tower without grounding what can be on maths and physics, no?
I don't think that's true at all, as evidenced by pretty much every successful software product ever (including the early relational databases, I should add) but would be curious to see the counterargument.