This brings up a classic distinction between a "Software Engineer" and a "Programmer". Without getting into a diatribe about semantics: my industry selects for

This brings up a classic distinction between a "Software Engineer" and a "Programmer". Without getting into a diatribe about semantics: my industry selects for people with software engineering skills. The ability to simply write code is not as valuable as the ability to problem solve, make thoughtful trade offs with known constraints, and design effective high quality solutions. Now readers may understand "Programmers" to also have these qualities. Fine. I'm not going to argue. But the same arbitrary distinction need not be applied between "real" engineers and programmers. Many real engineering are programmers.