4 ms·

This sentiment annoys the hell out of me. There are many great programmers (mainly in the web world) that rarely work with algorithms or other traditional CS to

This sentiment annoys the hell out of me. There are many great programmers (mainly in the web world) that rarely work with algorithms or other traditional CS topics. Just because he says he's product-focused doesn't mean that his code isn't well written.

jessedhillon 16y ago
If it doesn't solve any challenging or interesting problems, in what sense is it well written then? In other words if it's easy to write, it's easy to write well. (I hope we are talking about something more substantial than consistent braces and spacing style here.) I have a difficult time imagining that OP enjoys doing some of the more difficult things that are part of the programming universe: seems like he is interested in applying just enough script to Make It Go. You mentioned web development: I'm sorry but the majority of what's called web development is writing WordPress themes or Drupal modules, and most of this work is leveraging some API in tedious and uninteresting ways. Create this content type, do this when you save it, make this form, validate it like that, blah blah. A person who writes a plugin in WordPress to do the Nth most routine thing in the world (say, list posts in a particular order, for example) -- something that I have to do from time to time, just like anyone else who writes web-based software -- is merely connecting tubes. (Something I wrote elsewhere.) The point is this: to be a programmer means a specific thing, and it means more than stringing together statements in a language. My mom who can write `SUM(A1:A10)` in Excel is not a programmer, even though she can do some fairly complex things in a high-level language. And most kinds of contract web dev out there is writing the exact same functionality for the Nth time (or integrating someone else's plugin for the Nth time), by typing out the correct sequence of API calls against a commodity CMS. Or the frontend equivalent: embedding some off-the-shelf Javascript slideshow or a Facebook like button. If this is programming then we have a linguistic deficiency, because it's not even in the same category as the kind of work that goes on at the most innovative startups.
- IsaacL 16y ago
  " I'm sorry but the majority of what's called web development is writing WordPress themes or Drupal modules, and most of this work is leveraging some API in tedious and uninteresting ways. Create this content type, do this when you save it, make this form, validate it like that, blah blah. " You're correct that lots of web development is simple. However, a very large assemblage of simple components is not simple, and lots of web apps are very large. For example: one of the first web projects I worked on was a game written in PHP and MySQL. At first, it went much faster than expected, as writing a basic CRUD app in PHP is very simple. However, as it grew, it turned into an unmaintainable mess, and I got my first lesson in some basic coding standards. My friend had a good distinction - there's "difficult" projects and "complicated" projects. Something that is difficult might require some clever algorithms and maybe more time spent with a pen and paper than at the keyboard/ Something that is complicated requires a lot of coding, and thus a lot of effort spent in organising that code.
  - jessedhillon 16y ago
    That distinction between difficult and complicated is great, thanks for sharing that. My answer looks arrogant by comparison, because the distinction you shared allows both types of folks to be called programmers.

jessedhillon 16y ago

If it doesn't solve any challenging or interesting problems, in what sense is it well written then? In other words if it's easy to write, it's easy to write well. (I hope we are talking about something more substantial than consistent braces and spacing style here.) I have a difficult time imagining that OP enjoys doing some of the more difficult things that are part of the programming universe: seems like he is interested in applying just enough script to Make It Go. You mentioned web development: I'm sorry but the majority of what's called web development is writing WordPress themes or Drupal modules, and most of this work is leveraging some API in tedious and uninteresting ways. Create this content type, do this when you save it, make this form, validate it like that, blah blah. A person who writes a plugin in WordPress to do the Nth most routine thing in the world (say, list posts in a particular order, for example) -- something that I have to do from time to time, just like anyone else who writes web-based software -- is merely connecting tubes. (Something I wrote elsewhere.) The point is this: to be a programmer means a specific thing, and it means more than stringing together statements in a language. My mom who can write `SUM(A1:A10)` in Excel is not a programmer, even though she can do some fairly complex things in a high-level language. And most kinds of contract web dev out there is writing the exact same functionality for the Nth time (or integrating someone else's plugin for the Nth time), by typing out the correct sequence of API calls against a commodity CMS. Or the frontend equivalent: embedding some off-the-shelf Javascript slideshow or a Facebook like button. If this is programming then we have a linguistic deficiency, because it's not even in the same category as the kind of work that goes on at the most innovative startups.

IsaacL 16y ago
" I'm sorry but the majority of what's called web development is writing WordPress themes or Drupal modules, and most of this work is leveraging some API in tedious and uninteresting ways. Create this content type, do this when you save it, make this form, validate it like that, blah blah. " You're correct that lots of web development is simple. However, a very large assemblage of simple components is not simple, and lots of web apps are very large. For example: one of the first web projects I worked on was a game written in PHP and MySQL. At first, it went much faster than expected, as writing a basic CRUD app in PHP is very simple. However, as it grew, it turned into an unmaintainable mess, and I got my first lesson in some basic coding standards. My friend had a good distinction - there's "difficult" projects and "complicated" projects. Something that is difficult might require some clever algorithms and maybe more time spent with a pen and paper than at the keyboard/ Something that is complicated requires a lot of coding, and thus a lot of effort spent in organising that code.
- jessedhillon 16y ago
  That distinction between difficult and complicated is great, thanks for sharing that. My answer looks arrogant by comparison, because the distinction you shared allows both types of folks to be called programmers.