6 ms·
Care to elaborate? What's wrong with the word "coders"?
by vog 10y ago
Care to elaborate? What's wrong with the word "coders"?
- Stratoscope 10y agoBack 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.
- wjamesg 10y agoIs it just me, or is this typical HN elitism?
- emddudley 10y agoThis 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.
- fapjacks 10y agoIt 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.
- nwatson 10y agoSomeone 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.
- paulddraper 10y agoCoders is ambiguous, e.g. medical coders.
- grzm 10y agoMany English words support multiple definitions. Programmers and developers can both be argued to have similar ambiguities.
- paulddraper 10y agoDevelopers, certainly. Programmers...I'm not aware of another use of that other that creating software.
- grzm 10y agoProgrammers are also people who schedule broadcast programming or otherwise determines broadcast content.
- paulddraper 10y agoI 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.
- grzm 10y agoCoders 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?
- paulddraper 10y ago
- paulddraper 10y agoCoders is ambiguous, e.g. medical coders.