Interesting. I can look in the corporate address book, and we've got people in Burlington, Ontario who have titles like "SW Quality Engineer" and "Group Leader-SW Engineer". I wonder if that means that they can't put their official titles onto business cards.

Coming from a US perspective, I feel like "engineer" on its own is a descriptive word. "Professional Engineer" is a trademarked title, and that seems reasonable. Do I have certification as a PE? No. Do I think it's reasonable to describe what I do as software engineering? Yes. To me, it implies that I take part in planning, designing, implementing, supporting, and retiring software. "Programmer" connotes that I took someone else's design, wrote to that spec, and handed the results off to someone else, rather than taking part in the entire lifecycle.