Do you get offended when people think you are a programmer?
Isn't it like people thinking that a novelist is literally a writer? And might be willing to write a novel based on their ideas if they share the profits with him/her?
That's ok because it's an emotion with purpose in that it drives you to act. I am offended by the conditions in many African countries so I donate to those charities. I am offended by the jokes that person is telling so I don't hang around them anymore.
But if you are getting offended at something like this, where no action can fix it, than you're just causing yourself undue pain.
Edsger Dijkstra described himself as a "humble programmer" in his Turing lecture (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EW...). Don Knuth categorizes his contributions in three groups: "As a researcher... As a university professor... And as a programmer..." (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/bio.dvi). Joseph Weizenbaum's New York Times obituary headline called him a "Famed Programmer" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/europe/13weizenbaum....). Tony Hoare's description of his work on implementing Algol includes this: "I eventually married Jill, the other programmer who came to work on the same project" (http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/3/21782-an-interview-with... -- ACM access required).
Maybe one day if I work very hard and am very lucky people will think I am a programmer, too.
What title would you prefer over programmer?
So why should you be offended at being called a programmer? There are people ignorant enough to think that "programmer" places an upper bound on your talent and accomplishments, but there are also people ignorant enough to think that writing is an easy task that requires no talent. If you want to impress such people, allow me to suggest that you rely on your clothes and hairstyle and just be vague about what you do for a living. Such people will be even more impressed if they think you do nothing at all.
Sometimes "programmer" carries too strong a connotation of "code monkey". I find it best to just avoid places where this is true.
You write that like code monkey is a bad thing.
> I find it best to just avoid places where this is true.
It is good to avoid places that look down on code monkeys.
And the last bastion of respect, the software engineer is not without its enterprise-ish feel.
Researcher seems cooler, but it's all about feeling good and self-esteem in the end. :-)
What about the designers, web designers, front-end engineers? Does it piss them off being called a programmer every now and then?
i might get annoyed if someone was doing it on purpose with the intent to get under my skin or something.
How many people would be willing to write a novel based on your ideas for money? How many would be willing to write a novel based on your ideas for a share of profits?