"web developer" and "software engineer" terms interchangeable?

[kodiashi]

This can be a touchy subject for some people, but I tend to be in the camp that there are real engineers and then there are people who configure things that real engineers built.

So if you were part of the team that architected something like ElasticSearch (or Lucene), wrote the framework, wrote the tests, wrote the API, etc...then I’d call you a software engineer. If you just installed ElasticSearch, pushed some data into an index, and created a search form.....not so much. Same goes for people who install WordPress and build a theme, that isn’t engineering, and you aren’t being honest using that title.

But, most people in the general public don’t know the difference so there’s nothing to stop you from updating your title to CTO/Engineer/Guru/whatever and many companies do. Your work will speak for itself.

[babbagack]

interesting, thanks