Everyone here seems to be a big fan of the "no true Scotsman."
If you write code you're a programmer. End of story.
"Programming, and then there's programming" and "code plumbing" are, in fact, semantics.
If you write code you're a programmer. End of story.
"Programming, and then there's programming" and "code plumbing" are, in fact, semantics.
If you write code you're a programmer. End of story.
We don't call everyone that uses Excel a programmer, even though the simplest expression of the form sum(A11:A22) is, for every reasonable definition, 'code'. That would dilute the term far beyond what people generally mean when they talk about 'programmers'.
You cannot call yourself a writer, just because you passed English with a C for your essays and now write blog posts for a limited audience. You are not a programmer just because you can whip out webapps that strictly do the limited things you require of them.
If you do arithmetic, does that make you a mathematician? Some things are a matter of degree.
You could make the same analogy and prove any side of the debate depending on the job you choose:
If you do plumbing, does that make you a plumber?
If you do painting, does that make you a painter?
If you do physics, does that make you a physicist?
If you drive vehicles, does that make you a driver?
Really, the debate here is that some people consider the word programmer to mean "computer scientist" or "computer expert", while others consider it to mean "person who programs". It's a debate on the meaning of a word and this kind of debate cannot be settled, because the word has multiple meanings. Everyone's right in their own way.
This isn't an example of that, because nobody changed definitions partway through.