“Software developers” and “software engineers” distinction has the same energy when one uses to pat oneself on a back when they call themselves “expat” instead of an “immigrant”. You write code, all the huff and puff around “architecturing”, and “alignment”, and “knowing what to build” is just vapor. I’ve never met “software developer”, outside of online forums, who did “coding” and none of the latter.

Yep. "Developer" was already an inflation over "programmer".

Sometime in the late 2000s/early 2010s people started saying, oh, a programmer means you just type in the code to implement requirements, a developer actually understands and can create the requirements to meet the business needs! Like that wasn't what people were already doing for decades and calling "programming".

edit: I guess it was offshoring that encouraged the self-marketing as a "developer" (not one of those programmers you can get anywhere for cheap) just as AI is doing the same thing with "engineer"