Agreed. A lot of pedantry and smartest-person-in-the-room-ism going on here. People around here seem so jaded. Out in the real world (ie not Silicon Valley) a professional programmer graduates from a CS or CIS program, gets a job doing mindless coding somewhere like in a local government building and writes ASP, .NET, or some form of C all day. They get decent at like 3 languages, stagnate, and become dinosaurs. That's why so many systems suck when those guys retire and the new guys come in. I think that sucks and it should be avoided but my point is, what does make you a real coder/programmer/whatever you want to call it? Is it getting paid or is it knowing the ins and outs of the latest cool-new-thing? Because that's what it seems like everyone is getting at. I have a deep respect for everyone here who I know knows far more than I could hope to know but at this moment I'm a little disgusted by how out of touch everyone seems. I'd submit that there is a definition of a "real" coder but unfortunately it cannot be quantified. You know it when you see it. There's a combination of subjective skill, clout, and aloofness that quantifies the kind of real programmer touted around here but in the real world they're a lot like the cheap guys in India that a lot of people like to deride. I didn't know programmers could be such snooty hipsters.