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WOW! Excellent perspective. And I've never heard the term "citizen programmer" before. You're right. "I did it myself" and "I understand how it works" are defi
by OzCrimson 5y ago
WOW! Excellent perspective. And I've never heard the term "citizen programmer" before.
You're right. "I did it myself" and "I understand how it works" are definitely undervalued. And that plays into a lot of the empowerment/disempowerment conversation.
I had a client who would have me build prototypes in Excel, then he'd hand them over to his in-house development team. I asked him why he uses me in the middle. He explained that he can guide me and kinda understand what I'm doing, and we can test and tweak formulas really easily. He can stop me and ask questions if I start doing something that seems wrong.
Then he said, "but, when my devs open that code editor, I don't know what the hell I'm looking at."
That was a different kind of disempowerment that he felt vis-a-vis his own devs.
- sokoloff 5y agoI first read “citizen programmer” here on HN and it immediately resonated. I’m happy to pass it along, but I can’t properly attribute from whom I first read it.
- CRConrad 5y agoOne story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8612828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8612828 - The Salesforce Platform: The Return of the Citizen Programmer - by leephillips, 7 years ago Three comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651486 - by patentatt, 3 months ago, on: Why did we ever think a student's first programming language didn't matter? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384284 - by DonHopkins, 3 years ago, on: Ted Nelson struggles with uncomprehending radio interviewer (1979) [audio] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16228498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16228498 - by dragonsky67, 4 years ago, on: Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past [video]
- sokoloff 5y agoThanks for the research! None of those ring a bell, but I can’t be certain (and can’t be certain it was directly from here).