I'm not the type of person to care too much about titles.  If someone tells me they're the director of national accounts at a five person company, I'm not particularly impressed.  However, titles are a useful way to quickly summarize one's job, so I have some interest in getting them right.

That said, one of my main job roles is "web developer".  This should be a pretty accurate way for me to describe myself when others ask what I do.  The problem is that 10 years ago, web developers made websites with pictures of their cats and lots of flashing, scrolling, comic sans text.

Despite the widespread adoption of web applications like gmail, people still think that "real" programs aren't online.  Good programmers don't make websites, they make boring old windows applications.  If I majored in computer science and now I build online applications, I must be the most pathetic CS major ever.

When someone asks me what I do and I say I'm a web developer, they respond with something like, "oh yeah, my cousin has Dreamweaver and made her own website.  Cool".  So instead I have to say something needlessly vague like "application developer" or "software engineer" or just boring old "programmer".

These titles aren't nearly as useful as "Web Developer" but they communicate to people that I actually write real code which I guess is more informative than only communicating that I deal with websites.

So in case you didn't already know, the times they are a-changing and there are real applications hosted online these days.  If someone develops web applications, there's no reason to believe that they are any less of a programmer than someone working on a more traditional desktop app.  And if you ask me what I do and I say I'm a web developer, please don't assume that I spend all day making celebrity-themed Myspace templates.

/end rant