Comment by lesuorac
10 hours ago
Ignoring the sentence that admits they can be the same ("Programmers work closely with software developers, and in some businesses their duties overlap.").
Programmers is like a translator; somebody else came up with what to do and you're doing the mechanical work of converting words into C++.
Developer involves coming up with what to do.
Hence programmers is a lower paid position.
Programmer as defined here, in my experience, is a job that has never really existed. Sure, they've tried many times to create this divide - going back to the beginning of programming (originally considered secretarial work) - but ultimately programmer is still making many design decisions when typing out code.
That's not a distinction that exists in industry.
Your interpretation seems like apophenia to me.
There's no functional difference between a 'software developer' and a 'programmer'. they're just synonyms that sometime pay differently.