The 'No True Programmer' Fallacy

Do we call people that put together chairs structural engineers? Do we call baristas chemists? Baseball players physicists?

Words exist for a reason, and using a spreadsheet does not make you a programmer. However I can already see that programmer is being diluted to mean anyone proficient with a computer. What term should we use for people that can write software? 'Software engineer' feels like overkill for writing small self-contained scripts.

Gatekeeping this profession seems overly ridiculous considering how excessively poorly we all are at practicing it. What is that saying about people yelling the loudest when the differences are smallest or something? It strikes me as some sort of compensation mechanism. Most of our code sucks, just really, honestly sucks. The number of software projects in history that have been done to the best capabilities that time and money would allow is an appallingly low number. Almost every software development effort involves a disturbing amount of half-assery. The amazing thing is that despite this it's possible to produce things that work and have considerable value. But there are so many ways we could do better, I wish more people would concern themselves with that rather than trying to ride the bleeding-edge of coolness or to prop up their personal identity as a "legitimate programmer" by playing the exclusion game.

This is a discussion that happens in a lot of different fields of practice. In medicine, you might have the argument over to what extent chiropractors or naturopaths are physicians; /r/justrolledintotheshop, one of my guilty pleasures, has recurring posts about embarrassing things that shadetrees have done. Right now they're doing the, "hah, car mechanics? Try being a boat mechanic! Hah, boat mechanic? Try being a diesel mechanic! Hah, diesel mechanic?..." It's all pretty light-hearted, one of the reasons that I like that sub, but still, there are similarities.

I get where they're coming from. I've put some effort into teaching programming to other people too: young kids, guys with electronics backgrounds but not software, even a homeless kid. I look at programming as a skill, like dancing, martial arts, or swimming, that can be practiced and improved for anyone that wants to put the time in to it.

But then sometimes I find myself on the other side of the fence, where a project is being made a lot more difficult by someone because, "I know Wordpress, so I'll just handle this complicated not-Wordpress-related hosting issue myself." Or, "my system was acting strange recently, and I saw this thing about hackers on NCIS, so I..."

So that's where I start to have a problem with thinking of spreadsheets as programming. Technically, Jacques is right, it absolutely is. People do hilariously incredible things with Excel -- even flight simulators! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmlqgQidXtk) But it's also not the same as developing an api or wrangling some other more advanced project, and when the people you're working with understand programming to be as difficult as a spreadsheet, it can make for some hopeless no-win situations.

At least in martial arts, if you decide to spar with somebody that's a lot more advanced than you, you'll learn your mistake pretty quickly. If you practice swimming in a backyard pool and then decide to have a go at the ocean, you'll have a pretty sobering experience if you're lucky. But in software, it's possible to muddle along for quite a long time, making a really expensive mess, before you realize that you're in over your head. (Which probably most of us have done at some point.)

> What term should we use for people that can write software?

I don't think there's a need for a word, just as there is no word for a person who can swim (swimmer implies they do it regularly) or a person who can assemble IKEA products.

There is a binary test for a programmer: someone with basic proficiency in a Turing-complete language. I like this answer on SO about what that is:

https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132385/what-...

> In general, for an imperative language to be Turing-complete, it needs:

1. A form of conditional repetition or conditional jump (e.g., while, if+goto)

2. A way to read and write some form of storage (e.g., variables, tape)

For a lambda-calculus–based functional language to be TC, it needs:

1. The ability to abstract functions over arguments (e.g., lambda abstraction, quotation)

2. The ability to apply functions to arguments (e.g., reduction)

--

Note that you can be a programmer without ever having touched a computer, people have been coming up with algorithms and integrating them into systems for ages.