May I ask why the distinction is so important? If I properly understood your article you are advocating for diligently paying off technical debt. In isolation this is desirable of course, but in practice we have to choose trade-offs with other objectives. As the grandparent wrote, the things people who call themselves "software engineers" actually _do_ are incredibly diverse, both in domain and scope (compare a 3-week POC by two people to a 2-year project by a team of 5). Different situations call for different trade-offs and the actual value you add as an experienced developer is knowing how to balance the various aspects, one of which is technical debt.
You are correct. The distinction is actually less important than the main point of the article which is that diligently paying off technical debt in a long term software project pays off because it allows you to move faster.
The distinction helps me being honest with myself about what my role really is, and this means that I am less likely to be overly clever where it is not needed, which would lead to technical debt.
That makes a lot of sense. And I wholeheartedly agree that (in my experience) many long-term software projects suffer from neglected technical debt, resulting in poorer quality and longer development time (and a lot stress of everyone involved).
