The Myth of the Coder and Programmer

It's ranking according to skill level.

  1. Software architect
  2. Software engineer
  3. Programmer
  4. Coder

The lowest level is the coder who only knows how to code.

When you go higher, you have the more elite "programmer" who does the exact same thing as the coder but is more elite because he calls what he does "programming" instead of "coding"

The next level is the Software Engineer who is even more skilled then the programmer because although he does the exact same thing as both the coder and the programmer he calls what he does "engineering" which he deems equivalent to what rocket engineers do when they "engineer" a rocket that flies into space, but instead of a rocket it's some website. Keep in mind that as amazing as rockets that carry humans into space are, it is not as amazing as some plain website because these "software engineers" likely get paid waay more then rocket engineers.

The final, highest level is the software architect who's power is so high he doesn't even "code", "program" or "engineer" stuff anymore. Instead the software architect has the skill of "big picture reasoning" which is the skill of being able to draw boxes and circles on a white board and also drawing lines between those shapes. This is what we term "software architecture" and this is the epitome of software skill. The software architect is basically a god among software engineers.

My goal in life is to become a master at drawing circles and boxes and lines. I admire these people so much.

In my experience people who care or get hung up on this term are not people I think are great programmers/coders.

I like programming because it’s easy to ignore labels and just look at output to see if they are terrible or decent. Takes some time to distinguish decent or great, but it’s easy to see if someone is just horrible.

I’ve never cared if I’m programmer or coder or developer or engineer. It’s not like there’s legal differences like medicine or law (some places do have engineer labels, but no states where I’ve worked). I really care about ability to make an impact and compensation. Some of the stupidest titles I’ve had were most interesting work.

It seems odd to try to pick the right term as even for recruiting it’s probably better just to state the label, duties, and skills required in order to attract people.

>It is a stock element in narratives of 1950s computing to distinguish between programmers and coders, the latter considered a "lowly technician" ....

Actually I think the article is using modern terms, but seems right.

From what I remember from the early days, you had "System Analysts", "Programmers" and "Key Punch Operators". Key Punch and Programmers were considered Low-Level and was not paid much more the the US average salary, Programmers a bit more than Key Punch people. System Analysts was where the money was. But seems during the 80s, the 3 jobs merged into one.

By then, I use to program and work directly with the Business in the 80s and 90s. Sometimes the Business person would be sitting next to me while I showed then the changes and how it worked. Changing the program based upon their comments while they were there. Fun times, and yes even did this directly in production :)

Then it seems in the late 2000s, they started to split again giving us Business Analysts (BA) and Programmers (Coders).

This topic comes up occasionally. These days, people use the terms interchangeably. About 17 years ago, I wrote a post inspired by an article in an Indian Newspaper with more of an Indian context — more about the preference of IT grooms in matrimonial ads. This was a very personal view and lot had changed since.

https://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/

Is this the same as the distinction between an electrical engineer and a technician? That is, this is less about understanding the difference between coder/programmer, but understanding what people mean when they refer to technicians.

You see similar with cook versus chef. I'm sure the same distinction exists in near any work where a surprising amount of what needs to get done is far more mechanical than people admit.

It doesn't help that it is often loaded with loaded nonsense about worth.

This historical distinction has nothing to do with today's coders and programmers where a simple calculator does more than the super computers of the early days.

In present times, the complete road map is something like this:

coder -> Programmer -> Developer -> Engineer (Analyst) -> Architect

I think coder became trendy more recently and I believe it relates more to working on apps that screw the user. It kind of had that covert sounding ring to it

FFS people, the title includes the word "historical". TFA is not about the use of these terms today, other than tangentially.

Understanding why there even were two terms is actually quite interesting, and of value for all those pontificating on what they think current use of these terms ought to be.

There is definitely a difference between “someone who can write a working computer program in a language” and “someone who can design, maintain, communicate, document and own a part of a large software project.”

Whatever you decide to call these two things anyone who has onboarded a new grad/intern has observed this distinction because its a different skill set.

I thought it was the Developer and the Software Engineer.

It's a pointless distinction.

The people who write code in the demo scene traditionally call themselves 'coders', and those are pretty much the best of the best (and quite a few 'proper' software engineers among them).

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