
Don’t Call Yourself a Developer If You Don’t Code - ZnZirconium
https://mariopeshev.com/dont-call-yourself-a-developer-if-you-dont-code/
======
cr3ative
Call yourself whatever you want. There's no need to gatekeep a title which
means so little in the first place.

~~~
apetresc
Totally agreed. I regularly introduce myself as a doctor to new acquaintances,
since I occasionally visit the pharmacy to fill some prescriptions. It totally
pisses me off when they insist on asking me what medical school I went to, and
elitist crap like that!

~~~
klmadfejno
"licensed medical professional" != "developer"

~~~
mrweasel
What if you develop software for medical equipment?

As developers we’re lucky enough to be able to find industries where our
education/certications doesn’t matter. On the other hand, some niches which
could use an actual licensed training program.

You could in theory teach yourself enough about the medical field to know more
than a doctor, still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that someone
checked his or her qualifications. Even a CS degree doesn’t tell you anything
about a persons abilities to write software.

~~~
reaperducer
_What if you develop software for medical equipment?_

Then you're a programmer, not a doctor.

 _still the doctor has a piece of paper saying that some checked his or her
qualifications_

Yes. That's how we keep the frauds and whackjobs from killing people.

"Gatekeeping" is a dirty word on HN, but it also has its usefulness. We don't
let just anyone drive a car, even if they really really really think they know
how. You have to have a license.

------
bdcravens
Perhaps, but this argument could be extended. Many "developers" do little more
than glue together bits of framework boilerplate.

~~~
just-juan-post
Yep - code monkeys gluing APIs and data flows together.

Feel free to gatekeep about what a "real" developer is but in the end you all
just make someone else's APIs talk to each other. Oh and grind Leetcode for
interviews.

------
throwaway0a5e
Semi related but in the opposite direction:

I know a PE who worked for a local trash disposal service* many years in the
past. He always put something like "waste disposal and processing engineer" on
his resume and mads it sound like he was dancing around the fact that he was a
garbage truck driver. His clients would always ask about it as if he was a
truck driver since it looked like an oddball in the context of his resume and
he loved saying "Well no, I actually designed the facilities."

*Turns out low margin industries employ a surprising number of PEs so they can rubber stamp all their facilities projects in-house without getting bent over by whatever PE firm(s) is buddy-buddy with the municipality(s) they're operating in

~~~
danpalmer
What's a "PE"?

~~~
jasonpeacock
Professional Engineer, e.g. Civil, Structural, Mechanical, Traffic, etc.

They are licensed by the state they do business in, and are required to pass
exams and take continuing education credits.

~~~
danpalmer
Great thanks, never heard the term before so I'm guessing it's a US term. This
is what I understand a Chartered Engineer as in the UK, but that would
normally be abbreviated to CEng.

------
bee_rider
The title looks like gatekeeping and they probably did that intentionally, to
get anger-readers, but they're actually describing a specific issue: WordPress
users/admins that are calling themselves developers. The problem is that they
keep interviewing these folks for developer positions. That seems like a
reasonable complaint, at least from an outsider point of view. Although
arguably either some better filtering should happen at an earlier stage in the
process... or the author is that filtering.

------
HumblyTossed
Just titles. They don't mean anything in this industry. Stop feeling so hurt
about it.

I don't even know what my title _is_ at work. I'm sure there's an entry in a
db someplace, but so what? If anyone calls me anything it's usually an SME. If
I'm talking to someone new I usually just say I work with computers and leave
it at that.

------
oaiey
Well, developing a solution can include zero coding. And there it is fair to
call it developing (as in continuously enhancing something... Consider there
are land developers long before software.

I think the author just had a very specific problem. SAP surely has a similar
problem when searching core developers and tons of SAP consultants show up.

------
sushshshsh
"Only call yourself a developer if you are creating complex data structures
and algorithms"

~~~
HumblyTossed
Define complex.

------
duxup
A while back I saw someone who bestowed upon them self the term 'full stack'
onto their HR related title. That admittedly hurt a little to read.

But in the end they're just silly word and job titles and etc are already in a
very murky place as far as relevance goes.

~~~
jabroni_salad
'full stack' seems to have devolved to mean 'generalist' in some circles.

~~~
duxup
I always thought it was that, kinda from the start ;)

You can only know so much in depth.

------
hossbeast
And if you do code, call yourself a programmer

------
jbob2000
At my company, we have Technical Service Analysts and Developers. The
distinction is that a developer has power to modify the application they
manage, whereas a TSA only has the power to _use_ the application they manage.
Both can write code, though it tends to be that the developers write code and
TSAs don't.

For example, I have a TSA that manages our API gateway. They can't modify that
application by updating it's codebase, but have the power to deploy stuff and
write config scripts for it. As a developer, I manage a front end application,
so I have the power to change the code for this application, but I don't have
the power to deploy it and I don't really use it.

So I really think being a developer or not is based around what you have power
over as an individual.

------
dqv
Different (and niche) industries use words to describe what they do. Sometimes
those words collide in meaning when applied to different specialties. I've
worked in an industry where people use the word "programming" to describe
using a GUI to configure software. No code is written. It's just data entry.

The word has changed meaning in that industry and it's not really my place to
tell everyone they're wrong. I just need to be more descriptive when I talk
about what I do.

Don't call yourself a developer unless you renovate or build properties.

------
cblconfederate
stop telling me to stop calling myself a Senior Comment Developer, besides I
am a well known upvote hacker.

------
smlckz
I have read more code than I have written. What is a suitable title for me?

------
TrackerFF
I've been paid to create software in LabVIEW.

Checkmate, I guess?

------
anm89
Who cares?

~~~
commandlinefan
People who are trying to hire developers, for one.

------
efficax
literally who cares

