You're being downvoted, but you're spot on. I can't quite put my finger on when the term "software developer" when out of vogue, but I suspect it has to do with titles at FAANG companies more than anything.

At Google in Canada we are no longer supposed to refer to ourselves externally as software engineers, for legal reasons. We're software developers again. Which is how I have always thought of myself.

Well, back in the 90s I called myself a "programmer." I miss that, too.

I guess there are levels. Computer engineering is a proper science, much much more deep and broad than mocking up a web page. And people study the science for years, the same as civil or aerospace engineers do, and get a label for that, called 'engineer'.

Same with a doctor. You study for that, get the label. You cannot/should call yourself a doctor if you just read some Wikipedia articles and listen to grandma tips and go applying band-aids and aspirins.

> Well, back in the 90s I called myself a "programmer." I miss that, too.

Oh man, so true. I miss it so much. Developer is such a vague term.. but in my little heart I still consider myself a programmer.

Computer engineering is a science that shares common habilites and tasks with those your grandfather had. Maybe a website is more similar to build a garage than a bridge. And maybe building an operative system is like building a skyscraper...

"a person trained and skilled in the design, construction, and use of engines or machines.." - [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/engineer]

I guess what it comes down to, is software a machine/engine? Also, the person who does the "slicing up a design, authoring markup and CSS, and sprinkling in a JS plugin or two" is or should be the designer, not the developer.

Building a bridge isn’t anywhere near as complex as maintaining a javascript build pipeline.

If this is humor it really got me.

Because software development in the real world is hard. Hard computer science is hard. We're still in the infancy of the profession and have a long ways to go. I could honestly see it comparable to bridge building or rocket science.

Then reading again and seeing "javascript build pipeline" just made me LOL. Cause that's rocket science too.

With the latest SpaceX, JS is literally being deployed into space. So, rocket science, literally.