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Poll: Are you a Programmer?

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Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#21

Post by nostrademons »

derefr wrote: post #19
nostrademons wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. At my job, a programmer (well, software engineer, but there's not all that much of a distinction) is someone who translates this instruction into some combination of C++, Python, Sawzall, JavaScript, and various custom languages: "Make users happy."

This may be a philosophical point, but unless you're a game designer, that sentence has to end with "...by increasing the odds that, and the ease with which, they will succeed in their goals." You can make people happy by just giving them opiates :)

That's actually a good but controversial point. My employer has recently made a number of changes that measurably increased the odds and ease with which users achieved their goals, but were met with widespread user unhappiness. Similarly, there was one recent feature I was involved in that was universally lauded as being a fun little easter egg, yet wasted several million hours of productivity worldwide. It's an interesting balancing act between giving people what they want and giving them what they need, and while we tend to err on the side of giving them what they need, it can sometimes be hard to do so when they hate us for it.

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#23

Post by ekidd »

patio11 wrote: post #13
s-phi-nl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? What do you find advantageous to call yourself instead.

At my former job, a programmer is the guy who transforms this instruction into Java code: "The 16th digit in the CSV is a field with 1 representing that the student is excused from the English speaking exam. Such students are to have their English written exam score proportionately increased such that it makes up 100% of the point allocation for the English subject, but it is not to be altered in reports showing sub-…

Ouch. That sounds like a painful project. Once I understand the problem to that level of detail, I can generally write the code faster than I could explain it to somebody else. Of course, I use terse and expressive programming languages.

Don Knuth's title is "Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming". If "programmer" is good enough for Knuth, then after two decades of writing software, I aspire to be worthy of the title.

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#24

Post by mechanical_fish »

patio11 wrote: post #2

I code, but it hasn't been advantageous to call myself a programmer for a while now.

This tallies with my pet hypothesis about programmer career paths. It is commonly observed that programming is a young person's game: there are lots of teenage and twenty something programmers but fewer and fewer as you look at older and older age groups. This is sometimes blamed on age discrimination, and sometimes on the idea that programming is an exceptionally terrible career.

My hypothesis is that the "problem" with programming is that it has too much upside potential: If you learn to program, have a couple more skills than just programming and can keep your wits about you, you can find lots of business and professional opportunities... most of which carry job titles other than "programmer". You move up to "software engineer", and then you become "manager of X" or "founder of Y" or maybe you're just "the guy who does Z" where Z is something that makes money for the company, like marketing or strategic research or manufacturing operations.

The most significant piece of code I ever wrote was written when my official job title was "product engineer", which kind of means "troubleshooter". My job title and description had nothing to do with software; software just happened to be what I did all day, every day, (not to mention a fair number of nights) in order to help make the company millions of dollars by finding manufacturing bugs more quickly.

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#25

Post by detst »

nostrademons wrote: post #21
derefr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a philosophical point, but unless you're a game designer, that sentence has to end with "...by increasing the odds that, and the ease with which, they will succeed in their goals." You can make people happy by just giving them opiates :)

That's actually a good but controversial point. My employer has recently made a number of changes that measurably increased the odds and ease with which users achieved their goals, but were met with widespread user unhappiness. Similarly, there was one recent feature I was involved in that was universally lauded as being a fun little easter egg, yet wasted several million hours of productivity worldwide. It's an inte…

> Similarly, there was one recent feature I was involved in that was universally lauded as being a fun little easter egg, yet wasted several million hours of productivity worldwide.

Pac-man?

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#26

Post by derefr »

nostrademons wrote: post #21
derefr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a philosophical point, but unless you're a game designer, that sentence has to end with "...by increasing the odds that, and the ease with which, they will succeed in their goals." You can make people happy by just giving them opiates :)

That's actually a good but controversial point. My employer has recently made a number of changes that measurably increased the odds and ease with which users achieved their goals, but were met with widespread user unhappiness. Similarly, there was one recent feature I was involved in that was universally lauded as being a fun little easter egg, yet wasted several million hours of productivity worldwide. It's an inte…

There are two basic reasons an expedited process can create unhappiness: either

1. You're providing too many knobs and dials at each step in a workflow (see the TED talk[1]; solving this is basically where UX design and game design merge into one field),

2. Or there is a certain minimum level of strategic thought required for your business process, and you've removed all the "ruminance gaps" that allow users to have those strategic thoughts while believing that they are working. Instead, they have to just sit there and look unproductive while they ruminate, which creates stress. (You can also cynically call this the "users don't really want to do their jobs, so the more bureaucracy, the better" problem—but it still applies even to the most dedicated workers.)

You can solve the first problem with a re-design, but the second problem is actually a social one, related to how people are perceived, and how they perceive themselves, while working, and needs to be solved at the company-policy level.

As for easter eggs—I would say that it isn't your job to entertain your employees. You shouldn't be paid for releasing features which don't contribute to overall productivity (though, of course, you can do it anyway, on off hours; and keep in mind that increased morale has the same sort of effect on productivity that advertising has on brand-building.) But, on the other hand, it's also not your job to make sure that your users aren't entertained. Instead of releasing easter-egg features, perhaps just install some good games (not Minesweeper) on their workstations, and let them relax that way. Again, company-policy issue.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#27

Post by patio11 »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #24
patio11 wrote: post #2

I code, but it hasn't been advantageous to call myself a programmer for a while now.

This tallies with my pet hypothesis about programmer career paths. It is commonly observed that programming is a young person's game: there are lots of teenage and twenty something programmers but fewer and fewer as you look at older and older age groups. This is sometimes blamed on age discrimination, and sometimes on the idea that programming is an exceptionally terrible career. My hypothesis is that the "problem"…

I agree, strongly. It is the same story in languages, too -- the difference between a "translator" and a "international business consultant" is a better suit and about, oh, $200~300 an hour.

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#28

Post by jackowayed »

derefr wrote: post #18
rio517 wrote: post #6

You'd probably be better off asking a more general question. Non-programmers are not likely to click a link, "Are you a programmer," while programmers are probably 10x more likely to click such a link.

It might be tacky, but it would work well-enough to just rephrase it as "How many non-programmers read HN?" and have a single voting option. We can assume that HN's uniqs/month, minus that number, are the number of programmers.

No, it would drastically underrepresent non-programmers. That only works if every single person that visits HN this month will see this poll and will take the trouble of voting (possibly having to create an account to do it) if they are a non-programmer. It also requires the uniques/month number to be accurate.

I'd guess that you would get an answer 2 orders of magnitude too small doing it that way, and that might be a generous estimate.

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#29

Post by ajdecon »

Well, I guess so, as I do write code on a regular basis. But again no, because part of me thinks "programmer" should describe someone whose job it is to produce software, and my code is not the purpose of my work. I'm a scientist: my job is to translate experimental data into meaningful statements about the systems I study. It just so happens that this requires a lot of new software! :)

Which makes me wonder how many HNers who code are what might be described as "professional software developers"? And how many write code, but only because they need to in order to accomplish the rest of their job?

(this might also be a poor framing of the question, but I don't have a better one in my head right now)

Re: Poll: Are you a Programmer?

#30

Post by kanwisher »

dbz wrote: post #10
younata wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a hacker.

I call myself a coder because I write code. I don't hack, crack, or (verb)script-kiddie, so I won't refer to myself as a hacker, cracker, or script-kiddie.

*sigh I would hope people would understand the title of hacker on this website. Hint it has nothing to do with security
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