I wouldn't have downvoted, but are programmers generally actually scientists? I think next week a pop physics blog would make a headline saying "Programmers stop calling yourselves scientists". In my work, I do engineering and science related to programming. I see a lot of my peers doing less of both. But I'm actually a web developer. With how young the field of programming is, we're really more computer cowboys then scientists or engineers. The amount of science and engineering we do is dwarfed by the amount of exploring we do.