There's nothing wrong with PHP as a language, but I've never seen people offering to write python for fifteen dollars an hour.

And it's not like saying that doctors aren't a profession because there are homeopaths, because homeopaths aren't doctors. The segment of our industry that is more EE than CS is highly professional, somewhat organized, and relatively mature for an industry only fifty years old, but they are a small, nonvocal segment of our industry and they tend to distance themselves from the people who call themselves "developers."

Defining what is and isn't a profession can't be defined by hourly rates of pay for low level work.

Let's put it another way - just because some people dig ditches doesn't stop construction from being a profession.

The fact is that Computer Science is a profession. You might not like certain things about it, but you are deadset wrong if you don't consider it a profession.

By what criteria do you define construction as a profession?

By what criteria do you define computing to not be a profession? :-)

Don't burst a vein arguing over the definition of a profession.

The litmus test is whether or not an occupation has a policing organisation who dictates who is allowed to practice it. Lawyers, doctors, civil engineers are professions. Homeopathers, developers and ditch diggers are not.

I'll reference wikipedia, but its more of an unwritten rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#Formation_of_a_profe...

Off topic really, but there's people willing to write pretty much anything for $15 an hour. That's what you'll pay the company that employs them, they obviously won't get paid it...

Here's 1 easy to find example, note the advertised rate on odesk https://www.sugarsync.com/piv/D8109283_67296521_859910

I think the argument is closer to the fact that we don't let physicians in India immediately be physicians in the US.

People writing PHP for $15 an hour in India are seen as the same level as people writing PHP (or other language) for $125 an hour in the US and Europe.