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vog

Care to elaborate? What's wrong with the word "coders"?

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Back in an earlier era of computing, there was a strict hierarchy of jobs:

An analyst took business requirements and wrote specifications.

A programmer took those specifications and created flowcharts of the program logic.

A coder took the flowcharts and translated them into code on a coding form.

A keypunch operator punched the code onto cards, line by line, card by card.

So "coder" was a rather low status job, just one rung above being a typist.

Is it just me, or is this typical HN elitism?

I think what you're reading is an recounting of history, rather than a prescription of how things should be.

the "lets stop using it" comment, yes. Stratoscope's comment was just explaining why it hurts some big egoes. s/he didn't take any position on it.

This hierarchy hasn't been relevant for at least 40 years. There are software developers in their 30s who have literally never seen a punchcard in person. Coder doesn't mean the same thing it used to mean.

It hasn't been relevant for at least 40 years for most people in this industry. My first job was in an organization with exactly these people, except that "operators" (of which I was one at when I started as a teenager about twenty years ago) had several component levels of hierarchy within it. Sysop, Print Op, and at the very bottom of the ladder, the Tape Op, whose job is to be the robot arm that our organization refused to pay for (no shit). Now, I'm still in contact with a couple of people that I used to work with, and one of whom still works there (though now he is a programmer upstairs). That hierarchy does still exist. We did, however, have a card-punching machine. You fed cards into the hopper, and a computer did the punching. So we didn't have a keypunch operator. But I still have a stack of cards somewhere in my house. I'll have to ask if they still use that equipment.

Someone working at an auto plant once told me they "worked on software", they were a "coder", because they loaded the chips into the machine and pressed the button to flash firmware to the chips.

Others involved in "coding" might attach a laptop to an ethernet, USB, RS-232, etc., port in an industrial machine and use command-line tools or GUIs to configure a device or monitor/diagnose a situation.

There's so much so-called "coding" that doesn't involve actual "software development" that I'm uncomfortable with the terms "coding" and "coder" ... though I'm OK with "code" (as in meat), but not with "a software code" (as in "a pork chop").

EDIT: distinction between "code" as in meat and "a code" as in a pork chop.

Coders is ambiguous, e.g. medical coders.

Many English words support multiple definitions. Programmers and developers can both be argued to have similar ambiguities.

Developers, certainly. Programmers...I'm not aware of another use of that other that creating software.

Programmers are also people who schedule broadcast programming or otherwise determines broadcast content.

I had wondered if that was a thing; hadn't heard it.

Anyway, software developers, computer programmers, and software engineers have no ambiguity. Shorten those if you want, but "coders" is a leap.

Coders is empirically not ambiguous to the point of impeding communication, given that coder is actually in use. Language changes over time. Choosing to try to prevent that is of course something you may do, but it rarely will prevent change from happening.

My goodness, within this field itself computer used to refer to a person, not a machine. Run into any ambiguity there recently?

> Language changes over time.

And so I will continue to champion the language uses I want to see. E.g. internet instead of Internet, regardless instead of irregardless, "access" as both a noun and verb, programmer/developer/engineer instead of coder.

May the best word win.

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