Programmer vs Engineer Titles

Unfortunately "programmer" has come to be synonomous with "fancy typist" by the people who pay the bills. "Engineer", "architect", and "developer" all imply someone who codes with a focus on X, whether it be low level reliability, high level design for scalability, or general competence and requirements gathering skills.

My job title is [software] engineer, but I will proudly refer to myself as a programmer. I program computers. It is my perspective that engineering is formal training and application thereof, while programming is a more fluid and artful craft, wherein engineering principles are discovered and applied naturally.

I've been in this industry for a very long time. When I started, I called myself a "programmer". But then it became fashionable for everyone to all themselves "engineers", so I did the same. It's only a difference in marketing, but marketing can make a big difference.These days, I just call myself a "developer". I think it's nicely neutral and gets me out of those awful "what is an engineer, anyway?" discussions.

I'm not a fan of that term. It sounds so stiff and formal. When people ask what I do, I make it a point to always say "programmer" rather than "developer" or "software engineer".

It's marketing puffery, basically. I refer to myself as a "software engineer" when I'm talking to people who expect that to be the term to mean "experienced developer" (it's good to speak the language your audience understands), but I prefer to call myself a "developer".

In the software industry and related domains in other industries (i.e. software at a bank, software for retail systems, etc.) the words engineer, developer and programmer can be used interchangeably. I think "engineer" is more trendy these days than "programmer". Other industries also use the words "architect" or even "sanitation engineer" and they mean different things.I don't think its a big deal that the same words are used in job titles in diff

People call themselves developers or software engineers because it sounds a bit more pretentious. However there's no shame in calling oneself a programmer just like in the olden days :)

How have we ended up with “engineer” as the only acceptable job title for people who build software? What happened to programmer? Developer? Or even (glances at title bar...) Hacker?

'developer' and 'programmer' really are more apt terms - 'engineer' sounds more impressive though

Why not just call yourself a programmer? You tell it what to do, it does the work. I'm not sure there's a difference