I agree with your sentiment and hate the lame titles programmers apply to themselves, but you're missing a key point. Calling yourself a programmer is fine when your company's product is the software you write. If I work at id or at a company that sells iPhone apps and I call myself a programmer, it's obvious what value I create. But for the people making internal business software (90% of programming jobs according to Patrick) a programmer is associated with costs rather than profits, so it's a bad idea to craft an identify as a "programmer".