>>>When did "software engineer" become a pompous term for "programmer"? Perhaps it's semantics for you, but the terms have different connotations to me.
>

Pompous? MOI!?

Let me illustrate something.

When I graduated I worked for Singer Link-Miles Simulators (subsiduary of the Singer corp. and English sister company to Link in NY state). My first job was developing a weather radar simulator, with output on the cockpit EFIS. Part of this was programming a graphics tablet for "drawing" the cloud contours/profiles (this was before the mouse and mouse mat). Apart from that I wrote firmware to record and output sounds to/from a sound card (like the "whoop whoop - pull up", "glide slope", "Too low", etc. warning sounds in the cockpit), interfacing with the main sim. and reacting in real-time to sim. attitude, etc., I wrote diagnostics firmware for electronics equipment. I worked in a lab, on a high stool, often hooked up to some equipment or other, and using fairly low-level languages.

As such, I assumed my job was a tad different from that of a programmer per se. I was "making things move", not just writing software that manipulated databases or showed lists and details of data on a screen, etc. I didn't give myself the job title, and as such I assumed it reflected my tasks and responsibilities. I didn't assume the title to sound "more important". There were the all-garden variety of programmers working for the company.

I moved on from there to work for a bank, and was quite happy now to be deemed an "analyst/programmer". But this title has now gone out of fashion, as DP has been replaced by IT, then ICT, and I guess we're all all-purpose "system developers" nowadays

Oh, and as an "engineer" I got tax relief in my pay packet for "purchase of tools"! :-)