The viewpoint in this article is disillusioned at best. A real programmer is not someone who loves programming and attends hackathons to build iOS apps that map the sewer rats in NYC for fun. That stuff might be fun to the hipster who just learned iOS, sure. But I doubt someone who's been programming for 15+ years wants to build an app for bullshit. Every line counts more, because the capability is higher. Wasting time is dreadful, when one has been programming for so long.

I've been programming for nearly 16 years; code is not as fun as it used to be, and most programming jobs are inconsequential bullshit of buzzwizardry and magic frameworks, agile standup chicannery and the dread of dealing with the zesty pimple pricked CS graduate who just loves AngularJS and thinks he can code his way out of a paper bag when he's never done reverse engineering. Never made a web scraper. Never messed with shell code or assembly. Never wrote a game hack using hooks/detours. Never written a line of C. Etc etc. Programming is full of happy go lucky adult kids. Real programming is for getting shit done, that's all it ever was and will ever be to a seriously learned seasoned programmer. Whether it's building something, destroying something, modifying something, binary or source, the seasoned programmer has the skills; but don't expect him not to sigh when you bring up your giddiness surrounding menial programming labor for worthless causes; or just plain repeats of the last decade.