I like Computer Programmer. No mistaking it. Developers are people who organise houses to be built. Engineers work on trains. Coders encrypt data. No matter what nonsense word salad it says on my email signature, when I’m at a barbecue I say I’m a computer programmer.
I think typically A, B, C, and F are acceptable to most people. I certainly wouldn’t mind any of those descriptions. D feels antiquated. E is too broad. G just sounds like a hobbyist.
Yeah but the programming is done on a computer and then uploaded to that device. It’s not specific enough of a term anymore. That’s why it feels antiquated. Back in the 80s, most people didn’t know enough about computers to know there were differences in different types of programming, and there were fewer types then too. These days you still don’t need to be too specific unless you’re discussing your role with someone else in the industry but still, if you just say you’re a programmer now, pretty much everyone will know you mean it’s computer programming.
In Canada the term “Engineer” is a protected title that only registered professional engineers may use. Claiming to be an engineer without such credentials is considered equivalent to claiming to be a doctor of medicine; It constitutes fraud.
That being said, I see all the time employers and employees, seemingly ignorant to this law, post “Software Engineer” in job titles.
Registered professional engineers in the software development space is a rare occurrence.
If you iteratively solve problems by learning, building models, and trying hard to break said models until a sufficiently robust one remains - welcome to engineering.
A load of the devs at my original dotnet shop are still there, but are now called stuff like “Vice President Regional Director Lord Protector Master Technical Architect”. I suspect they’re all still writing VB.
At some jobs, I can get away with “Señor Developer” or “Computer Toucher”. Those are the nice ones.
Otherwise it tends to be “Senior Software Engineer” that carries the least constricting baggage.
I SWEAR big company middle managers hear “developer” and they can only ever see you as an infant who without guidance would just keep coding some absolute random shit and not think about product, market, customers, integration, or prioritize their own work.
Not only does this meme ignore the fact there’s only 4 choices in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, it doesn’t even do an even number of them leaving it annoyingly lopsided
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