Your favorite programmer doesn't like coding | Hacker News Reader

Your favorite programmer doesn't like coding

chegra.posterous.com

15 pointschegra15 comments

Yeah, sorry, but I just don't believe that. I've worked with plenty of programmers who, when faced with a perfectly acceptable off-the-shelf solution will happily slog out lines upon lines of code to roll yet another CMS, authentication, syndication, blog, social... you name it application. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying all programmers are this way, but a large part of what makes a good programmer is a self-belief that their ideas are superior to what already exists. External motivation is certainly a factor, but most of the best programmers I know code because of the rush they get from refining their own ideas.

I'm sure that sometimes it's the rush and sometimes it's the ego, but I find a huge problem with off-the-shelf code is that it rarely fits into what you've already written. It can be something as simple as having different naming conventions, to the almost-impossible-to-deal with problem of the third party code having a whole different idea of the place it should fit into the overall program's structure. That stuff is a tough problem, I think, and one there isn't a good/known solution for.

You may not have recognized it, but a really good programmer always uses the off-the-shelf stuff if it will do the job correctly. Chances are, there's nothing on the shelf that does what they want exactly. So they code it. But when there is, they use it.

How many programmers do you know that wrote and use their own programming language? OS? IDE? Web browser? Email client?

There are thousands of apps that they use every week and don't code their own.

IMHO it's not hard to make the books, but it's incredibly hard to build the shelf well.

build the shelf a little wrong and chances are that the only books that will fit are the ones you have to write yourself

Way to not get it.

I used to write games for fun. The problem was that there's a lot of boring stuff to writing a game: tracking key presses fluidly, polishing the interface, making sure it runs well on others' machines, etc. Also, the games weren't really that much fun. (Pretty much on par with 80% of the Flash games out there. "Oh look, yet another top-down shooter.")

Then I realized that I don't write games because I want to play them; I write games because I want to make them. Making a game is a game in itself. Why should I spend the time making my unfun game shiny when I could be having fun?

So now, I make "aquariums"- stuff happens on the screen, but there's no real interaction. The fun stuff happens in the code. Maybe some of it will eventually be useful in a real game, but that's not the primary goal.

Aren't we past the idea that "ability to instruct a computer and/or runtime via a programming language" comes with a preconceived set of personality traits? Chester describes a certain kind of programmer well, but the idea all programmers conform to this behavior pattern (and, by extension, if you don't conform to the pattern then you're not a programmer) is silly.

Put another way, A lisp hacker, a java developer and a priest walk into a bar ...

Now you really have to come up with the rest of that joke, I'm dying to hear it! :)

I'm not really convinced that a programming language that builds products from a subset of pre-made parts by making assumptions about implementation, rather than requiring the designer to plan in full detail and iron out design/logic inconsistencies, would really be all that useful.

But more to the point, I'd imagine a lot of programmers wouldn't even be interested in programming if it wasn't difficult. There's little point to a puzzle if someone just tells you the answer. Coding is all about choosing pieces, putting them together, and questioning whether the way those pieces are used will get you to your ideal solution.

Sure, some people code just to create output. Some people exercise just to burn calories, and hate every minute of it; those probably aren't the people climbing mountains.

What I was referring to is the shift from 2nd Generation Programming Languages to 3rd. The post is basically predicting the same fall off will occur when we transition to a 5th Generation. Hence, a programmer is more interested in creating something, since 5th Generation Languages is basically talking(not coding) and creativity process is what is common amongst the languages . http://github.com/languages - This as a reference, assembly is not in the top ten.

Also, doesn't like code is not hating coding. It also encompass being disinterested. Thus if a better option present itself there would be no hesitation to adopted it.

My perspective is to view programming as a tool for being creative and when it is abstracted out like this, the question arises what other tools can we use to be creative?

Yes there will be a few people who still use 3rd generation language still but it would be like some people still use assembly today.

What is this about 2nd-, 3rd- and 5th-generation languages? I'm pretty sure most of us are using something like 20th-generation languages.

http://www.levenez.com/lang/lang.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-generation_programming_la...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-generation_programming_l...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-generation_programming_la...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_l...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_programming_la...

I see. One of the examples on Wikipedia of a 5th-generation language is Prolog. If you've ever looked at Prolog, it isn't just like talking. While it makes some problems easier, it makes others more complex. It's not the creative silver bullet you've made it out to be.

Among the list of 4th-generation languages is SPSS. Guh. SPSS works well enough for one-off analysis, but any sort of automation is extremely frustrating.

Based on these Wikipedia articles, (I'm not interested enough for further research) it does not appear to me that the numeric ordering has any correlation to programmers' productivity or the languages' usefulness in general creativity.

I don't know if I'm anyone's favorite programmer, but I derive enormous satisfaction from building working applications - even unsexy CRUD applications - from nothing. What we do professionally is already god damn wizardry: we turn text into something that moves.

My response to this: My favorite programmer likes to code so he can create tools that allow him to create facebook clones by just telling the computer to do so, though instead of verbal, instead merely a: phing deploy-fbclone or whatever so chosen.

I enjoy coding my own ideas and not that much others ideas. Basically from 9 to 5 I just code, from 5 to 10 I enjoy (coding).

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