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What is a developer?

Andy Nicolaides: I’m not sure what I am, but I know what I’m not

I am a developer by trade, but not anything close to iOS development, so whilst no stranger to coding, I’ve spent a couple of months in Xcode and there is not a chance I could tell any of you that I know what has been done within it. If this is the case, how involved was I? Did I just spew out a few lines of prompt and the rest was taken care of? No, not quite. Given how new all of this stuff is, I think the right terminology still needs to be decided. One thing I know, ‘developer’ is not it.

I am always happy to see Andy writing, and I think he makes his case well, but I happen to disagree on this topic. I think the term "developer" ought to evolve with the world around it.

Ultimately, the words don't really matter, and surely new terms will come up ("vibe coders" says hello), but I also want to stress that if your definition of "developer" only includes people writing all the code themselves, then you're not going to be able to call many people that for much longer.