My friend, if you write programs, you are a programmer. Period. I would not venture to call myself a computer scientist, but by god, I write programs. I happen to do it for the web, which means I’m also a web developer. Someone that writes programs that happen to run on the web. I am a programmer.

Don’t tell me I’m not, just because I don’t have X degree from Z institute, or write in your quintessential language-du-jour. Get over yourself. I’ve met plenty of self-proclaimed “programmers” in the “best” languages that couldn’t problem-solve their way out of a paper bag. And I’ve met many “unwashed” programmers that have solved some real world problems elegantly and with a lot more class than your post implies that you could ever demonstrate.

For anyone that sits in front of a computer and writes code of any kind: Stop (or don’t start) judging people based on their language of choice, their educational background, or even their title. Start judging based on RESULTS. And start by looking in the mirror.

You make a good point. One thing that I didn’t really express in the post is that we obviously have a stack of technologies that we currently work it at any given time, and we might use that to label ourselves (e.g. Rails developer), which is of course totally legitimate.

I should have done a better job of saying that it was more of the mindset of labeling yourself by a specific tech that I think can be limiting.

I’ve met people who write fantastic C code in PHP and vice versa. They may be great programmers, but until they refactor their brains to gain a certain level of comfort in their medium (and that skill is gained in weeks and months not hours), they won’t be an efficient developer in that language.

By introducing yourself as a “Ruby Programmer” or a “Rails Programmer” you’re not saying “This is the only language that matters”, but rather “This is the language/framework that matters very much to me right now”.

So no, I don’t think people are necessarily doing themselves a disservice by labeling themselves with languages. It moves the conversation forward one step. Who would you be excited to talk to a party - the MVC guy or the Ruby guy?

Not sure where the hostility came from. Part of what I’m saying in this post is encouraging people to branch out and learn the benefits of different languages/frameworks/etc.

seriously now, just quit calling yourselves “programmers” or for christ’s shake “computer scientists”..