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.

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.