Web Development

Those that program in .Net think that they are Programmers as do those who only use VB and those who write a Macro for Excel.

Personally I don't see any issues with using others Framework to do things as you do not need to reinvent the wheel every time but with things like the .Net Framework it seems to me take away that and the people who use it are stuffed and can not do any new work.

All things like .Net achieve is to make it harder to dump M$.

Col .

If you want to go down the route of "real programming", then you could do the following.

Write a virtual machine to implement an OS that you design. Design your own programming language, and then write a development environment to work in. Then, you go back and re-write your OS and all the tools in your own language. Ultimately, you could design and have built a CPU to run all your code!

This might sound extreme, but it was once not that unusual. Mind you, this was in the days when there probably weren't any more than a few hundred "programmers" in the world.

It's not a bad way to learn how these things really work. Doing at least a couple of these steps, perhaps design a simple language and implement a compiler and a text editor in it.

You will learn a lot, but it's not a cost/time effective way of doing things these days except as a learning exercise.

and why does it really matter?

If the person who signs your paycheck considers it real, that's all that matters.

ASP is a programming language, there is code that is created to do stuff, and the people who create that code are programmers.

Is someone who describes a task in a language a computer 'understands'

in ASP.net using VS the computer understands ASP.Net, you are really programming

If you wrote a show customer details page and then used it from several other pages, is one more real than the other?

One is simply an abstractionof the other...

If you want to get closer to the machine, understand the how and why of the framework and the langauge, there are new thngs to learn, but programming is just as real.
There's no doubt you'll end up being a better programmer if you master it, you won't become a realler one though.

Any time you give a computer instructions for repeat use, or even single use, you are programming. You may add that to your experience, but it's the level you consider yourself that's important. If you only use the component tools in Visual Studios, you are still programming, but you're not a very apt programmer, since there is a deeper level of understanding.

A macro or script is programming; recording a macro is considered high level, as it is the surface level of understanding, whereas macro scripting is a lower level example where the programmer goes beyond the surface, and since lower is better in computer understanding, the lower level a programmer you are, the more understanding you typically possess.

Anytime you use your remote to tell your VCR to record something at a certain time, or put a roast in the microwave and tell it how long to defrost, cook, and cool down, you are programming. Programming is nothing more than giving a machine a set of instructions to carry out. So certainly ASP is a programming language and using it on .Net is programming.