However, let me put my argument another way: the ability to work with you to formalize your idea is what you're paying for when you hire a programmer. You're paying for a human compiler[1], a fully-intelligent REPL where you can give vague commands like "make me the next Facebook" and, through the programmer's Engineering knowledge, they will ask you questions and force you to make choices, until they've turned that informal idea into an actual capital-S System. Inasmuch as they have that Engineering knowledge, the resulting System will be a formalization of your own desires. And then, having the formal System, the programmer can go and implement it. That part is comparatively trivial, and increasingly done "by" the software compiler. Victor is noble for driving us further toward trivializing that part of the process, but it is only part of the process.
But anyway, back to your points:
Most "programmers" aren't programmers. If you're only as good at programming as a member of the general population, then you don't get a special job title, right? Otherwise, I would be right now a writer, actor, landscaper, game-designer, philosopher and life-coach, as well as a programmer. But in only one of those fields could I actually make more money than some schmoe who just decided to jump into the field last week, and the reason I'm "more of a programmer" than Bob-the-Accountant is a programmer, is that I can do the Engineering part better. If Bob-the-Accountant started calling himself a programmer, he'd be a white belt programmer--someone who just joined the Art, and must still unlearn their preconceived knowledge before they may begin--while my belt, at least, would have some color on it. Plenty of people calling themselves programmers are white-belts. That doesn't mean we should consider them when we speak of "the thing that programmers do." It would be like including people who write their own legal contracts when speaking about "the thing that lawyers do."
So yes, if we're going to keep using the word "programmers" to refer to both the Engineer journeymen and the white-belts who produce misfeasance with their every step, then we should stop putting "programmers" on a pedestal. After all, what use is a pedestal where the people on it are exactly as high up as the general population around them?
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