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Do we call people that put together chairs structural engineers? Do we call baristas chemists? Baseball players physicists? Words exist for a reason, and using

by hueving 11y ago

Do we call people that put together chairs structural engineers? Do we call baristas chemists? Baseball players physicists? Words exist for a reason, and using a spreadsheet does not make you a programmer. However I can already see that programmer is being diluted to mean anyone proficient with a computer. What term should we use for people that can write software? 'Software engineer' feels like overkill for writing small self-contained scripts.

joonoro 11y ago
> What term should we use for people that can write software? I don't think there's a need for a word, just as there is no word for a person who can swim (swimmer implies they do it regularly) or a person who can assemble IKEA products.
BerislavLopac 11y ago
So you're saying that someone writing a small self-contained script is a programmer, while someone who constructs a complex, multi-layered spreadsheet with complex functions, graphs and formatting isn't?
jstuxx 11y ago
Software developer is more than good enough in my opinion. However I've encountered two types of programmers, there are those who contribute new ideas, new algorithms, solve new problems, find new, more efficient, safer solutions to existing problems, etc. Then you have the other type who just write glue code between different frameworks and libraries which someone else wrote, they never write anything themselves but download third party packages from Github or whatever to accomplish their tasks. I wouldn't call the latter "software development", coding or scripting would be a better word and yes anybody who is proficient with a computer can code or script but not everybody can be a software developer. It's similar to how assembling your own flashlight, or even assembling your own computer does not make you an electrical engineer. "Real programmers do not reinvent the wheel" is an overused cliche which has been diluted to mean anyone who does anything other than gluing together third party libraries. The cliche itself does not make sense since the wheel is one of the reinvented technologies in existence, if we hadn't reinvented the wheel we would still be using logs.

by hueving 11y ago

joonoro 11y ago

> What term should we use for people that can write software? I don't think there's a need for a word, just as there is no word for a person who can swim (swimmer implies they do it regularly) or a person who can assemble IKEA products.

BerislavLopac 11y ago

So you're saying that someone writing a small self-contained script is a programmer, while someone who constructs a complex, multi-layered spreadsheet with complex functions, graphs and formatting isn't?

jstuxx 11y ago

Software developer is more than good enough in my opinion. However I've encountered two types of programmers, there are those who contribute new ideas, new algorithms, solve new problems, find new, more efficient, safer solutions to existing problems, etc. Then you have the other type who just write glue code between different frameworks and libraries which someone else wrote, they never write anything themselves but download third party packages from Github or whatever to accomplish their tasks. I wouldn't call the latter "software development", coding or scripting would be a better word and yes anybody who is proficient with a computer can code or script but not everybody can be a software developer. It's similar to how assembling your own flashlight, or even assembling your own computer does not make you an electrical engineer. "Real programmers do not reinvent the wheel" is an overused cliche which has been diluted to mean anyone who does anything other than gluing together third party libraries. The cliche itself does not make sense since the wheel is one of the reinvented technologies in existence, if we hadn't reinvented the wheel we would still be using logs.