Developer

Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."

More important, when we looked at who worked in that industry, we noticed that programmers were in the minority. They’re dwarfed by, among other occupations, the software developers. The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but the jobs follow very different trajectories. Nationwide, software developers haven’t struggled nearly as much as their programming brethren — few other computer-related occupations have. So what makes programmers different? To answer that, we need to dive forehead first into everybody’s favorite part of any analysis: arcane occupation definitions! Upon perusing the fine print, we saw that while programmers do in fact program, they “work from specifications drawn up by software and web developers or other individuals.” That seems like a clue. In the real world, “developer” and “programmer” can seem almost interchangeable. But in the world of government statistics, where we have legal permanent residency, there’s a clear distinction. In the [US] government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them. Their pay reflects this gap in responsibilities. The median programmer earned $99,700 in 2023, compared with $132,270 for the median developer. And while 27.5 percent of programming jobs vanished, jobs for developers have only fallen 0.3 percent, similar to the broader industry.