Personally, and I'd like to stress that this is my opinion, I feel that the term is very reductive. It has its etymology in "code", when programming encompasses much more than just writing code. (we also write documentation, tests, use complex tools, version control, invoke the command line, etc...) It evokes the term "code monkey" which just sees programmers as tools to barf out code. Lastly this is just my own conceit, but I believe that the term just doesn't describe the approach used well which spans so many different methodologies and concepts. (to throw some keywords out there: TDD, Agile, idioms, patterns) To say that developers merely write code is like calling engineers builders or doctors healers. (again, those terms wouldn't be wrong, but quite reductive)
Writing code isn't hard at all. I could teach someone how to write working hello world programs in a day. The hard part is architecting these projects to be readable, modular, extensible, efficient, and to follow standards.
Also not the OP, but this is exactly why I don't use the term except in a pejorative sense. Code is a tool in my toolbox; it is not what I do, it is what I may apply to a problem if it is appropriate to do so. If I describe someone as a coder, it's because I don't particularly trust them to solve problems that don't involve code (and I probably don't trust them to solve problems that do, either).
It is funny, because on a personal level, I have a rather distinct, if not opposite feeling about "code". But I never thought of it this way before thinking this answer. Thanks for that, and here goes.
First I tend to split the word from its meaning (because ontology matters, right?). I say "we code" just like "a driver goes back to his wheel" when we really mean his car, it's a figure of speech. Using a distinctive, hallmark part of something to refer to the entire thing (a "sail" for a boat, a "roof" for a home, etc.) When I hear a special one saying to a third party "oh he's coding", knowing she knows pretty well actual code writing is like 10% of the work, I hear "he's working, programming, doing his job/hobby". This thing.
I agree that a smug face dropping a condescending "that guy's a coder" may not be a particularly nice feeling though (but I personally hear "I'm too stupid to understand what this guy does, or I don't like doing it myself, so I'll just be a douche about it because it makes me feel better about myself", and laugh it out as you would imagine).
Then, the meaning. I come from a science background/interest, so there's code of the highest and noblest kind everywhere: DNA in bio, but also HLA; the Standard Model, and Information Theory, etc. Our reality is just a biologically-biased (i.e. "human") perception of what is, for all intents and purposes, code in the most fundamental of meanings. Even human languages are just code for our brains to communicate states.
So when I see our tiny civilization harnessing matter and energy into complex electronics, packing whole cities of transistors into powerful machines that spell a dramatically new turn in our quest against entropy (in other words one physicist's answer to "what is the goal of civilization?"), and how it's all just code... I don't know, but it inspires awe more so than anything (note that I don't care one bit how others see it, it's very personal). I see something graceful in the way we do that, in the way computer code is just our abstraction for finite state machines, just like a living cell runs on DNA and below all the cosmos runs on quantum fields. I tend to consider it a beautiful achievement that we've been able to abstract so much, so deep, considering the man hours required to replicate the activity of just one modern CPU.
Sorry for a long post, totally off topic as it stands. It's just that the social and historical perspective that gives coding a bad name rubs me in exactly the wrong way, as if it were belittling a god to say they've encoded this universe, or if the DNA in people (and links between them) wasn't just about one of the most important factor in their constitution and evolution. Code matters, as far as we know, and actually literally.
A TL;DR/ last minute poetry illustration: saying "a winery makes wine" doesn't fail to honor their work because we ommitted the seven hours out of nine when they're not actually making it; on the contrary the very superior nature of the resulting nectar speaks for itself of the high nature of their trade as a whole, and it's gratifying that we don't speak of all the behind-the-scenes not-so-glamourous aspects of it.
So I make code. How's that not beautiful in every possible way? :)
IMO, programming consists of two main tasks: developing abstract algorithms to achieve desired goals and reducing those abstract alogorithms to concrete code.
While both are essential, the hard, interesting, and more valuable part is the first, and "coder" captures the second.
(Software development encompasses even more tasks.)
Developer > Programmer > Coder
(Leaving aside, for the moment, the collision of "coder" with a completely unrelated profession.)
> While both are essential, the hard, interesting, and more valuable part is the first, and "coder" captures the second.
Depends on what you find interesting. I'd almost consider this an elitist attitude. Eventually, somebody has to do the actual work to implement the abstract algorithms, and it's really a lot better when you've got a talented person that cares about those nuts and bolts details and the realities of hardware and networks and runtime performance.
