I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

I don't know but where can I get that jigsaw?

Here you go: http://mu.ms/f/pxYcdb.png

I don't know. I like getting close to code, because I like thinking about the people that make each symbol, establish a meaning, weave that into a language, where it is either contextually derived or explicated clearly. I like watching those things change and I like figuring out why some things stay the same. I like selecting words for new concepts, which I am never really sure of whether these things are arbitrary. When I zoom out and generalize enough, everything shares the same fuzziness, these symbols are all puzzle pieces. But when I zoom in, each puzzle piece is the puzzle itself.

I grew up enjoying puzzles, logic puzzles, logic books, math books, piece puzzles, riddles, and all the supposedly clever things to that affect. The more involved I become in the world of programming though, I can't really say.

I have the time to study the complex math and computer science theory sometimes, on the weekend, for fun, and then the code I read through ranges from deeply personalized learning to clear, uniform specifications developed over time periods I have no actual experience understanding what goes on during those time periods. I know the importance behind many theories, and I understand how to apply these things. But I don't know why or how it grew.

If you want to see a puzzle pattern in code, you will see puzzles everywhere. You can see anything you want to in code, just like every other human creation. Make your own meaning and what not. Code is more art to me than 'Art' is.

Puzzles are a terrifically poor way of judging whether a candidate will be good at performing the most common form of programming there is: solving meaningful problems, often business or interface ones, in a simple and readable way. Your primary audience for this type of programming is other humans. I'll take a good writer over a puzzle-solver any day. Don't get discouraged if they aren't for you.

I dislike puzzles too. I guess because you're just finding the creator's predefined path, and it often feels like a pointless task. Programming is coming up with original solutions of your own, so I don't see the two as wholly related.