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Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#51

Post by world32 »

Supernaut wrote: post #44
interfixus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As perceived by the general public, there is a huge difference: Most people have some idea, however vague, what a doctor or a lawyer actually does , while ' programming a computer ' is utterly obscure and opaque to a lot of those same people. This keeps surprising me again and again, but apparently any kind of computing device is a black box built on magic, probably to the vast majority out there.

Very true. When I'm at social occasions and I get asked what I do for a living, the subject will be hurriedly dropped when I reply that I'm a software developer. It amuses me. As you say, the whole concept seems to be so far outside of most people's frame of reference, that they have literally nothing to say on the subject. The lack of intellectual curiosity in the general populace is dismaying to me, but it was ever…

> the whole concept seems to be so far outside of most people's frame of reference

What? Are you living in the same world as me?

Pretty much every industry apart from manual labour or craftsmanship related work uses software. If you work in an office chances you spend most of your time using software.

Then people go home and play on their smartphones which connect to back-end API servers developed by software engineers or stream films of netflix, also developed by software engineers.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#52

Post by notacoward »

QuamStiver wrote: post #17

I've been coding professionally for almost three decades, and the pursuit of elegant solutions makes up about 1% of my paid work. The rest of the time I'm fighting constraints: time, money, available resource, risk, all the usual. Very rarely does professional software engineering leave room for art, IMO.

A little over three decades here, and you're absolutely right. For every hour spent developing a cool algorithm, there are likely to be at least ten spent on low-level coding details, hooking it up to its inputs and outputs elsewhere in the code, writing tests, debugging other people's tests, integrating with build systems, debugging other people's build breakage, monitoring and alarms, addressing code review nit-picks, rebasing on top of whatever my coworkers jammed in while I was being diligent, documentation, etc. Any non-trivial project will also be interrupted by meetings, project-wide direction changes, on-call shifts, and so on. If I get one uninterrupted morning/afternoon of working on "elegant solutions" in a month, that's a good month.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#53

Post by Supernaut »

world32 wrote: post #51
Supernaut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. When I'm at social occasions and I get asked what I do for a living, the subject will be hurriedly dropped when I reply that I'm a software developer. It amuses me. As you say, the whole concept seems to be so far outside of most people's frame of reference, that they have literally nothing to say on the subject. The lack of intellectual curiosity in the general populace is dismaying to me, but it was ever…

> the whole concept seems to be so far outside of most people's frame of reference What? Are you living in the same world as me? Pretty much every industry apart from manual labour or craftsmanship related work uses software. If you work in an office chances you spend most of your time using software. Then people go home and play on their smartphones which connect to back-end API servers developed by software enginee…

You completely missed my point. I wasn't suggesting that the average person doesn't utilise software on a day to day basis. I was agreeing with the author of the post above mine, who pointed out that to most people, "any kind of computing device is a black box built on magic". They have absolutely no idea how their devices work, and neither do they care to find out.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#54

Post by UweSchmidt »

world32 wrote: post #49
UweSchmidt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that's true. Legal minutiae and latin diseases are at least as opaque to people as software code, the actual work likely less glamorous than programming.

Yeah I don't really see law or medicine as any different in this regard. People all have a basic idea of what makes you ill, what various diseases, treatments etc. are. But most people don't understand the intricacies of the endocrine system. People all have a basic understanding of the law, what kind of sentences to expect for what crimes, how court works etc. But most people don't understand . You see where I am go…

My original point (which you don't seem to disagree with): It's on Hollywood to fix the misrepresentation of IT workers asap and produce some heroic characters from our field.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#55

Post by gnode »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

You could make a similar meaningless argument about electronic engineers. Most just solder together ICs, and the IC designers mostly glue together IP blocks. They pay utility companies to provide electricity.

To work at a lower level doesn't mean you're a more advanced engineer, in some ways it means the opposite; working at a higher level usually requires some understanding of what's below.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#56

Post by C1sc0cat »

bildung wrote: post #45
C1sc0cat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes think drafting laws badly is a feature not a bug - after all think of all that lucrative legal work for other lawyers.

Couldn't the same (IMO flawed) reasoning applied to the topic at hand? "Computers are made complicated on purpose - after all think of all the lucrative programming jobs"

Not in the case of laws :-(

I know of one infamous Pensions case that dragged on for well over a decade in the UK over some arcane legal arguments.

Of course the longer the case went on the more pensioners died

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#57

Post by interfixus »

Supernaut wrote: post #53
world32 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole concept seems to be so far outside of most people's frame of reference What? Are you living in the same world as me? Pretty much every industry apart from manual labour or craftsmanship related work uses software. If you work in an office chances you spend most of your time using software. Then people go home and play on their smartphones which connect to back-end API servers developed by software enginee…

You completely missed my point. I wasn't suggesting that the average person doesn't utilise software on a day to day basis. I was agreeing with the author of the post above mine, who pointed out that to most people, "any kind of computing device is a black box built on magic". They have absolutely no idea how their devices work, and neither do they care to find out.

The author of the post above yours absolutely concur. Everybody uses software. Few have even a basic conception of how it works.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#58

Post by notacoward »

gnode wrote: post #55
externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

You could make a similar meaningless argument about electronic engineers. Most just solder together ICs, and the IC designers mostly glue together IP blocks. They pay utility companies to provide electricity. To work at a lower level doesn't mean you're a more advanced engineer, in some ways it means the opposite; working at a higher level usually requires some understanding of what's below.

> working at a higher level usually requires some understanding of what's below.

Maybe what's immediately below. I fervently wish that "higher level" developers did have some slight clue about what happens when they make a call to lower layers, especially wrt storage since that's what I work on, but I've learned not to rely on them having any such knowledge.

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#59

Post by subjectsigma »

externalreality wrote: post #3

There's a lot of fantasy in this article. Most programmers today do very little actually - we don't wield major influence. We basically glue together a bunch of Free Open Source offerings. The most critical skill is that ability to move fast by practicing with our Free Open Source offering tools. We pay (MS, Google, or Amazon) to host our applications. And we perform maintenance on these applications for years. Nothi…

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong (plenty of other people did that) but I'm wondering what experiences you've had that makes you believe the average 13 year old could pick any task and just "glue together" libraries to solve it?

Re: Hello world: Shining a light onto the culture of computer programmers

#60

Post by subjectsigma »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #6

Regardless of how accurate this portrait of programmer culture is, I must say that I welcome the attempt to create some positive PR. Our fellow nerds, doctors and lawyers, somehow got star treatment by hollywood, while our kind is usually portrayed as unattractive, awkward, laughing stock and at best a passive character in an assisting role. This tragically reflects on our perception in the real world.

Conjecture here, and a pretty simple one: people like money, power, and status. Lawyers and doctors have tons of money, have power over you (you are alive, you are not in jail, all because of them), and have credentials because they need to pass hard tests. That's easy to like.

By contrast, understanding what some computer people even do is hard for the layman (no obvious power), and until pretty recently computers did not make you a lot of money. We also let pretty much any idiot with a computer write code, it is not a position of status.

Shows like Mr. Robot and Silicon Valley are already starting to show how perception is changing. Nerds still get made fun of, but you can't be laughing too much at filthy rich entrepreneurs or hackers who do whatever they want to drug dealers, the police, etc.

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