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.
From someone who transitioned from operations to development over the course of their admittedly short career, this is a poor mindset. Much like how you shouldn’t disrespect a janitor or a nurse, you shouldn’t say “gross” about IT work.
IT may not be the reason for the company’s existence, but it is what allows it. The company may not exist without you, but you don’t exist without IT.
I’d say in English there is more of a difference, in my native language the term is more blurry I’d say, for a random person it just sounds as “computers”, and to most people that’s all they care about.
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.
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.
This is my opinion that is basically a compilation of the coworkers I’ve talked to about the subject.
Depends on the role. Passed senior level most prefer to be called engineers. Those are the people designing the whole system. Software developers are usually more mid level and figure out the specifics of how to design smaller sections of the system. They cut a lot of the detailed tickets and write a lot of infrastructure code.
Programmer is usually the juniors who never design much and just take tickets and turn them into code.
When I say senior, mid level, and junior, I’m referring more to the role that you’re fulfilling that day, and not the overall skill level. Engineers will often step in as programmers for more complicated code.
We usually accept any of the terms though because it’s very rare for someone to not jump between the various tasks depending on what the active project is. And at some companies they only hire seniors and they perform all roles.
TL;DR: Every software engineer is a developer and programmer, but not every developer is an engineer, and not every programmer is a developer or engineer.
Actually my title is “Senior Network Architect”. I hate it. I feel like it detracts from real architects, who have licensure and actual training from an actual school.
I hate it as an architect, and I hated it as an “engineer”, for the same reason.
Yes, there’s a lot of complexity and planning, especially at larger scales. But it’s mostly self-taught, some webinars, and a lot of on-the-job (read: trial-by-fire) training.
When it comes to telling computers what to do, I have no idea what to call it. I write Python scripts and Ansible modules, I guess. That doesn’t make me any of those titles though. Some times I poor-mans deamonize my scripts (while true loop) and pack them in a container.
Using some of the same tools doesn’t make me any more of the same title.
Lol i do this when the pm wants to note me down as “develor lead” on change requests, and i force him to change it to “developer enthusiast” instead lol i aint leading nothing.
I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).
I’m a Senior Software Engineer, outside of countries where engineer is a protected title. I’m also a Beep-Boop Technician, Specialized Generalist (not Full-Stack since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon), Problem Fixer, Technical Diplomat, Cat Herder (sometimes a tech lead), and The-Mean-Guy-That-Rejects-Commits-When-There-Are-API-Calls-Made-Without-TLS-Encryption-And-Hardcoded-Secrets (infosec likes me but always seems genuinely confused at a dev not fighting them).
Oh man, I didn’t think that’d work haha… Kind of you to offer but I was recently promoted and wouldn’t feel right leaving now. Partially out of respect for my boss and partially because we are severely understaffed. But seriously, thanks for offering to ask around. Very generous of you to offer your help to a stranger ❤️
I’m learning that I’m just enough of a front end dev to make a very ugly site. Navigating all the various CSS and JS frameworks feels like pulling teeth.
Having a familiarity is absolutely a great thing. The syntax isn’t alien, so, debug and guiding juniors through figuring out why their project isn’t working isn’t too terrible. The typing is probably what drives me crazy the most. It’s just bad and the standard library doesn’t seem to be equipped to handle every type that it can “support” cleanly.
since I have mostly succeeded in avoiding JS, until this afternoon
Sorry to hear that. I hit the same pothole about 6 months ago. I had been so fine with avoiding JS, but the guys building our admin console broke their build and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Even worse, then I had to write up best practices for JS
Yeah. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do the programming. Unfortunately, I had to guide the debug. Happy to help people learn but the language, especially in its typing, is just awful.
programmer_humor
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.