I think we're at a weird watershed moment in the web industry where nobody fits their job descriptions anymore (if they ever did). Designers are writing code (actual code, not just markup), programmers are designing interfaces (shiny interfaces with AJAX inside) and we're all walking around having a really hard time describing what we do. Ask a web professional what they do and tell me how many times you hear "web developer" or "user experience engineer" or something equally vague and amorphous. We're all programmers who wannabe designers or designers who wannabe programmers.

If I were honest these days, I'd probably punt and call myself a "hybrid designer/developer". But I come from design roots, and that's the way I think. No matter how many lines of Javascript or Python I write, I'll never be able to call myself a programmer. I'd feel like Dan Quayle: "I know programmers. I work with programmers. And you, sir, are no programmer." I'm sure there are programmers coming to this no-man's land from the other side who feel the same way about design.

I used to have a list of software and technology "proficiencies" on my resume. It was huge, and I thought it looked really impressive. "Look at everything I can do." But I took it out when I started looking at other people's resumes for hiring, because I realized how useless they are. We didn't care if these people knew PHP or Javascript or freaking COBOL. As long as they didn't have a list made up solely of Microsoft products, we didn't pay that much attention. We wanted smart people who "got it", who were excited about doing things right. Smart people are quick learners.

And there are always plenty of books out there on PHP, Javascript and probably COBOL too.