In my mind, "consulting" is knowledge work. Your role is to lend knowledge and expertise, help with strategy, architecture, tool/platform selection, etc.
"Contracting" is high-skill grunt work. Your role is to code your fingers off, deliver-deliver-deliver, typically according to someone else's (possibly ill-conceived) plan.
The former is an activity and the latter is a business relationship, so they're orthogonal. Many consultants are contractors but not all are. Many contractors sell consultancy but not all do.
You got the types of consulting right, but the terminology wrong. Yes, one type of consulting is lending your expertise, another type is lending a pair of hands. Either of these types of consulting work can occur under "contracting", "freelancing", or other types of business relationships. Often a "pair of hands" consult is hired "until further notice", so it's not always contracting.
> "Contracting" is high-skill grunt work. Your role is to code your fingers off, deliver-deliver-deliver, typically according to someone else's (possibly ill-conceived) plan.
Not at all. Contracting, in itself, is just the business agreement but most of the time contractors are experts and have plenty of autonomy.
No, you've got the distinction right. Many folks don't understand that difference. Many consultants crank out a lot of code, but they also do advising, planning, recommending, analyzing,...
I understand what you are trying to say but it is also a form of master-slave dialectic, you don't like something and feel above it and try to organise your social life with strict rules to isolate you from it. It's not even always a bad thing to do, like I an a coder who tries to avoid working with people who think like you.
In my mind, "consulting" is knowledge work. Your role is to lend knowledge and expertise, help with strategy, architecture, tool/platform selection, etc.
"Contracting" is high-skill grunt work. Your role is to code your fingers off, deliver-deliver-deliver, typically according to someone else's (possibly ill-conceived) plan.
Have these things truly become synonymous?