My impression at this point is that while non-technical people can't tell the difference and don't care to learn, there IS a split in the two sides of things no

My impression at this point is that while non-technical people can't tell the difference and don't care to learn, there IS a split in the two sides of things now. This is a little weird to me, because for my age group (I'm 50), both sets were typically made up of the same tribe of computer-obsessed folks who begged a 6502 machine from their parents in the early 80s and took degrees in unrelated fields because of how far behind industry most university CS programs were in the early 90s. (And there really weren't any MIS programs.) Somewhere along the way, though, a split happened. And in many (but not all) companies, IT became a lower-tier support organization. Salaries stagnated, and a quality gap happened. It might just be that, in lots of places, developers are a revenue source while IT is nearly always overhead. It's a rule of thumb that the more talented folks will probably venture towards being revenue and not overhead, because the compensation is typically better, and the organization will treat you with more respect. So now, in many but not all places, there's a perception of a class difference between the two. The IT guy is derided as someone 5 hours short of an associate's degree with a cheap certification, no ability to troubleshoot beyond obvious steps, and zero interest in computing when off the clock while the developer is an ivory-tower whiz kid with hobby projects in Haskell and his/her fingers in half a dozen FOSS projects. I am obviously exaggerating. But this view, which is not uncommon, and reflects a shift that IS real even if not to the degree I lampoon above, is probably why a developer would make the distinction.