I Am Not A Programmer

This is not meant to be critical or in any way superior, but shortly after acquiring my first programmable calculator in the early 1970s and extending to the present, I have no doubt about why I write programs -- programming works in a world where nearly nothing else does.

Governments don't work. Religions don't work. Relationships don't work. Philosophy doesn't work. And psychology certainly doesn't work -- it's a field with more self-deluding, self-important frauds per square meter than any I can think of.

But programming works -- if you become skilled at it, you may end up writing real solutions to real problems that people find useful. I get calls every day from people who have problems they could easily solve if only they knew how to program. For example, today I got an e-mail from someone who needed to compute the relationship between sensor height and volume in an underground storage tank that (a) had an unknown shape and size, and (b) had also been deformed by overhead truck traffic over decades. I solved the problem for him, using a little math knowledge and some simple programming.

Programming is to modern times what literacy was to the Middle Ages -- it puts you in the enviable position of having an essential skill, one people simply can't do without.

> I Am Not A Programmer

I am a programmer. Looking through my notebooks from the 1960s, I realize I was a programmer before I had a way to gain access to a computer -- I kept trying to solve problems algorithmically, years before I had a chance to write a real algorithm or see it executed.

I think back to the early 19th century, the time of Charles Babbage (difference engine) and Ada Lovelace (the first computer programmer), and I think how tragic that they spent their lives pining for access to something we take for granted.

This isn't to overvalue computers, only to say that having access to computers now seems like a natural right, a good thing, but being denied that access is like not being able to breathe. A few decades ago, almost no one realized this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lutus

Mathematics and Physics work too,just saying