[phillipamann]

I think about this a lot. With the rise of cloud computing, I wonder if what I am doing is even programming. I even searched Stack Overflow recently to see if working on complex configurations counts as programming or not. There obviously wasn't consensus.

I saved this thread to "read later" in the hope that I can identify how to get into a position where I am working on interesting problems but more or less, I implement business logic. Of course, it's still slightly interesting when you think about the scale or what I actually created but it's not technically interesting.

[solarkraft]

I'm not sure about "Software Engineering", but "Programming" to me sounds like making a computer run something to your liking, which would include configuring it.

[bootsz]

IMO the problem is that today we generally still only have one name for all of these jobs (software dev|engineer) when it reality we probably need 2 or 3. It makes planning one's career and searching for the right job very difficult.

[hawski]

Code is data is code. Sometimes in a declarative and a high level language.

[MartinCron]

Programming, testing, debugging, tuning, and yes, configuring are all parts of the umbrella that I like to call “Professional Software Development”.

All valuable skills, worth respecting and improving.