

It’s probably predominantly because of the switch to mobile computing / smartphones / web being dominant, and everyone referring to programs there as “apps” / applications.
i.e. If you write a mobile app with a function-as-a-service backend, you will never compile what someone would refer to as a “program”, so calling yourself a “programmer” (as-in, someone who makes programs) feels inaccurate and a not helpful description for people. “Coder” (as-in, someone who writes code) is a vaguer in terms of the type of code you write and more accurate in terms of what you spend your time producing.








People at the University of Washington don’t refer to soda pop the same way as people at Berkley, or at MIT, or at Oxford. Why would they all have had the exact same term for writing software?
Edit: I’m being argumentative, I honestly have no idea what term was common then. At that point most people I knew referred to it as “computer stuff”