I'm very confused about how this places Software Developer at #1 and Computer Programmer at #30. I'd always understood these to be different terms for the same thing, is there some distinction I'm missing that accounts for the $15,000 difference in average salary?
It's using BLS categories which don't necessarily match up to actual job titles or to colloquial use. According to the BLS, Computer Programmers turn detailed specifications into code while Software Developers have involvement in the development process beyond just writing code. Software Developers are far more common than Computer Programmers, so for the most part you can just ignore the whole Computer Programmer category.
