Stop Turning Programming into a Religion | Hacker News Reader

Stop Turning Programming into a Religion

medium.com

24 pointsnewarked14 comments

The modern approach that a CS background is unnecessary, that you don't need to know algorithms, and that a complex software system can be documented by a bunch of out-of-date files scattered over a website, all contribute to cargo-cult programming. It's natural that someone would propose throwing money at a server that stopped working, if they have no clue how any of it works, and/or have no problem-solving skills.

It's easy to find fault with university CS curricula, but picking up random stuff from Youtube and Reddit seems a worse path to being a software professional than a university program.

So true. See also the comments on this Agile post today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38979266

People still insist that if your team does Agile and fails, it's because you did Agile wrong, but if the team succeeds, it's because of Agile. Tell me that's not cultish thinking.

This argument isn't helped by the fact that a lot of people are doing agile wrong lol.

Agile might be fine in SW. It is when you combine it with HW that it backfires. (Power management not yet implemented, test failed)

I’m not sure who the “we” is in that article. Doesn’t describe many I’ve known.

To be honest, the one true god of programming is the almighty Mathematics, in the form of Algorithms & Data Structure. Thy should have know this when thou are a CS freshman in college.

Although Mathematics still had it arch-enemies, like the Godel Incompleteness Theorem and the terror beast of Halting Problem, with Cantor and Hilbert to threaten its existence.

This touches on, but doesn't address, something I've been feeling for a while

I don't like to talk about programming. Particularly online, but offline is distasteful too. Every programming decision always boils down to people blathering on about their opinions on something or another, at best talking past each other when those options differ, otherwise arguing about shit that just doesn't really matter.

But talking to programmers about things that arent programming? That's great. There's a ton of depth and insight and everything else there. Side projects, ideas, whatever else. But no one ever wants to talk about this shit. They always just want to argue about which language/framework/amalgamation of mistakes is 1ms faster than the other. It always just becomes a pissing contest. Because it's a religion? Maybe. But we see the same shit with Ford v Chevy (or any other two opposing entities that are virtually the same)

I have very few programmer friends. I don't feel like I have much in common with them.

Discussing tools and frameworks with them isn't as interesting when their goals are so completely different. They seem to treat programming as an intellectual pursuit, where the functionality isn't the point, the point is developing new ways to talk about and think about algorithms and data.

They do not seem to really like modern tech, things like being able to get a notice on their phone if the area with pipes is below a certain temperature isn't what they're here for.

It almost seems like unless they have a lot of simplicity in their life, their minds are bogged down with ideas of ways things could be better or simpler, and have a huge mental backlog of stuff they use that they'd like to do their own version of.

They're never working on a project, they're always mentally a little bit distant exploring other layers, and they're never not working on a project just doing normal offline stuff... For the same reason.

They're smart and we couldn't have a modern world without them... But they can be so different its hard to relate... And often they actively dislike the stuff I do and the projects I'm nterested in....

And as you say, they always wanna talk about programming, so it's harder to actually get to know them if you're not into Vim and Arch and C.

Some even seem a little bit depressed and like code is an addiction more than hobby...

don't exclude ASD for at least some of your friends, based on the self-selection bias in the field, maybe that's where their simplicity craving comes from and the coding addiction

In a way, most deities pop up to provide a self-consistent explanation for the unknown.

> It’s all just a set of tools used by the real deity, yourself.

Yeah, don't kid yourself. Open that Britannica link, read up on the omni-everything qualities real imaginary deities had and realize you don't possess an iota of those to be able to put the blame for everything, including code generations of other deities "just" built, upon yourself

What about the people that hire these workers? Where is the discussion of their responsibility in this? People are electing to hire in this fashion, so these are the results.

In their blissful ignorance, some so-called 'programmers' literally create gods to explain their own shortcomings.

I agree with the part about people trying to solve problems with more magic.

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