In the old days, pre 1980, when computer 'terminals' or 'ports' were scarce, programmers, particularlay Cobol programmers, wrote their code on coding sheets or forms. These forms had preformatted grids that could accommodate all of the divisions of a cobol program and had to be filled out appropriately and precisely with proper margins and syntax. These were passed on to a 'coder', basically a typist, who would type the code onto a machine readable medium--perhaps cards--which were fed into the computer for compiling, a procedure that could take a considerable time. Eventually, a printout of the results of the compile found its way back to the programmer who would then have to use the report to debug his program. The programmer worked to a 'spec' produced by an analyst. Over time, as terminals or work-stations became more available these jobs began to overlap. Programmers became their own coders--they would still write their code on sheets so that the program could be visually debugged by a 'walk through' and when happy with their code they would book time on a terminal to code and compile their programs. They would still work to a program or system specification produced by an systems analyst. Eventually these two jobs overlapped--hence analyst / programmer. I would not get too technical about the other titles. Often a title was issued instead of a raise and managers became ever more creative in assigning titles. Many of these titles were movable in the sense their meaning could change. For example a 'software engineer' was, one time, someone who could quantify, in terms of time, the various procedures a computer might have to perform to execute a particular program. They were also involved in quantifying to what extent a program was provable. I have a certificate that says I am a software engineer but for the particular course I practised none of these tasks.