Debatable whether minified JS is “open source”, in the same way that compiled machine code is technically still visible, just unfeasible to comprehend (despite, or perhaps in spite of decompilers).
Anyway, minified JS lacks comments and prompts to read from. The explanation I have accepted is just the sheer massive quantity of JS code and libraries coupled with all the documentation surrounding it.
Professional engineering is really about implementing processes and procedures that create reliable and dependable systems. Ultimately it’s about responsibility and risk management. Being an engineer has nothing to do with understanding or implementing technology or technical details and specifications (unless you are in an extremely junior level engineering position). That work already has another title: that’s called being a technologist (and there ain’t nothing wrong with that title and that work).
Very, very, very few technologists (including self-taught programmers, computer scientists, and even some engineering grads) have, or even understand the skills needed to manage technical risk, simply because those skills are not part of any of those curriculums and the licensure required to be recognized to conduct those activities. It requires knowledge, training, and certification specifically, not just a university degree or x years on the job. Of course, it’s not the sort of distinction that the general public understands by “engineering” since the public kind of just takes the act of technical risk management for granted.
Conversely, it’s perhaps also why the number of engineers with hands-on skills is shockingly lower than we expect: using technology is not on the engineering curriculum.
But yeah, just because the general public confuses technical skills with engineering doesn’t give you, lacking all three of : an accredited engineering degree, an engineering licence, and perhaps most importantly, malpractice insurance, licence to call yourself an engineer.
Typing characters is maybe 1% of the job. The other 99% is understanding how the change affects everything else. Changing a single line of code in a function called by 1000 other functions each themselves called in 10 other functions can still potentially be more work and a bigger change than changing 9000 lines of code in a function called once.