IT role terms such as software engineer, application developer (ApplicationDevelopment), systems analyst, etc. are fuzzy or inconsistent. Why is it this way and how can it be remedied?

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In our industry, we see technology "generations" roll by every three to five years. Possibly faster in some areas. 

Thus, just in the time one goes to college to obtain a degree, one can watch an entire generation go by, and fizzle into history.

It is easy to be so caught up in this incredibly fast cycle that we honestly think our industry is moving that much faster then any other. But the people in the industry are moving at the same one-hour-per-hour rate of every other industry, and we only produce wisdom at the usual one-hour-per-hour rate. 

The IT industry, assigning it the arbitrary start date of 1980, may have been around for 25 years or so, which is about five generations. In any other industry, that might have been a hundred years. But we've only generated 25 years worth of 'wisdom', which isn't even an entire ''human'' generation, and a lot of that "wisdom" has ended up flushed down the tube as a result of rampant agist policies discarding people as they age. (Which is the only way to acquire wisdom...)

The reality is, not only is the IT industry a very, ''very'' young industry by any rational standards, the constant flux of technologies really has made things even worse, as we're too busy just staying afloat to figure out what really ''needs to be done''.

How can it be remedied? I don't think the problems you see will be "remedied" until IT stabalizes. It might be stabalizing now, or this might be a calm before another storm. I don't know the answer to that. All I know is, that's a pre-requisite. --JeremyBowers