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The historical distinction between coder and programmer
- KingOfCoders 2y agoI thought it was the Developer and the Software Engineer.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoThe software engineer is a truly mythical creature. I've never seen one despite working in software!
- ravenstine 2y agoJust as well, I've never seen anyone conduct computer "science."
- avery17 2y agoI've seen plenty of co.puter magic though.
- bee_rider 2y agoComputer rituals!
- eloisant 2y agoTo see people doing computer science you need to go to a university and watch professors doing research. Also you can go to computer science conferences such as ACM conferences.
- gwbas1c 2y agoI once picked up a theoretical math book about category theory. It's a lot of the mathematical basis behind data structures; and where terms like "class" come from. Unfortunately, when I was in undergrad, my school and other schools didn't understand that most incoming students needed "software engineering" instead of "computer science." Although there is a lot of overlap; misunderstanding the intention and purpose of students made it very hard to learn the skills we were there to learn.
- MPSimmons 2y agoI've known several, but I've worked at aerospace companies, and the level of rigor is necessary.
- renewiltord 2y agoI don't think this myth will last after we've seen what software Boeing has built. Rigour in these industries appears to be just "build broken stuff slowly then blame someone else".
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThe fact that someone does it badly does not mean that it is never done well.
- renewiltord 2y agoPeople used to make this claim about the primes all the time. That the reason they are so expensive is that they're rigorous and all that shit. It turns out that Space Shuttle style code means "blows up for all sorts of reasons". The primes are expensive not because they're rigorous but because they're good at government contracting. They're going to get outcompeted soon. SpaceX and Tesla have shown that there is an opportunity in government contracting. Now, newer organizations are going to be "rigorous" in their own ways.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago> It turns out that Space Shuttle style code means "blows up for all sorts of reasons". Do you have any evidence for that claim? (And don't point me to the two Shuttle explosions. Neither of those were a software failure.)
- renewiltord 2y agoSure, consulting rate and contact is in profile.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoI thought it was programmer and software engineer?
- faizshah 2y agoThere is definitely a difference between “someone who can write a working computer program in a language” and “someone who can design, maintain, communicate, document and own a part of a large software project.” Whatever you decide to call these two things anyone who has onboarded a new grad/intern has observed this distinction because its a different skill set.
- mattacular 2y agoThose are often the same person, at different points in their career.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- faizshah 2y agoYou can absolutely work as a professional writing code for 20 years and never work on a large software project or a project with a large team. I worked on a small team at a government contractor that never used version control and deployments were an rsync from the lead engineer’s laptop to the cloud, this was in 2020. There’s a lot of industries like bioinformatics or journalism where there’s people who are adept at writing code but who are not doing software engineering.
- mlinhares 2y agoThis repeats so frequently I can't believe people still make this mistake. Multiple times i've seen people hire people out of college, give them not well defined work and then get mad that the person can't deliver. It takes a long while for you to be able to go from fuzzy feature request to fully fledged product, people without experience need A LOT of handholding to be productive and that is fine, no one is born knowing everything and if you're going to hire people without experience you should EXPECT to invest time in training them.
- taway1874 2y ago+1 Seen it many times where a new grad / jr. engineer exaggerates their skills to get a job and the greedy hiring manager thinks s/he has scored big time with a cheaper hire. Big mistake on both ends. Be truthful, do a thorough assessment and it will be a good match.
- jmclnx 2y ago>It is a stock element in narratives of 1950s computing to distinguish between programmers and coders, the latter considered a "lowly technician" .... Actually I think the article is using modern terms, but seems right. From what I remember from the early days, you had "System Analysts", "Programmers" and "Key Punch Operators". Key Punch and Programmers were considered Low-Level and was not paid much more the the US average salary, Programmers a bit more than Key Punch people. System Analysts was where the money was. But seems during the 80s, the 3 jobs merged into one. By then, I use to program and work directly with the Business in the 80s and 90s. Sometimes the Business person would be sitting next to me while I showed then the changes and how it worked. Changing the program based upon their comments while they were there. Fun times, and yes even did this directly in production :) Then it seems in the late 2000s, they started to split again giving us Business Analysts (BA) and Programmers (Coders).
- bee_rider 2y agoFinally, a job title that I can get behind. Self-directed key puncher.
- flohofwoe 2y agoIt's a pointless distinction. The people who write code in the demo scene traditionally call themselves 'coders', and those are pretty much the best of the best (and quite a few 'proper' software engineers among them).
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoTFA is about the historical distinction, which is absolutely not pointless, and has nothing today with demo scenes or modern self-adopted nomenclature.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- taeric 2y agoIs this the same as the distinction between an electrical engineer and a technician? That is, this is less about understanding the difference between coder/programmer, but understanding what people mean when they refer to technicians. You see similar with cook versus chef. I'm sure the same distinction exists in near any work where a surprising amount of what needs to get done is far more mechanical than people admit. It doesn't help that it is often loaded with loaded nonsense about worth.
- randomdata 2y agoA coder, as the name literally implies, is essentially a human compiler. We long ago moved to using machines to do the coding, so it's not really a thing people do anymore (certainly not as a profession). The term has stuck around in modern times as a pretentious way to say programmer, but means the same thing in that context.
- taeric 2y agoWe do seem to have kept a lot of the idea that there are more mechanical parts of most programming jobs than we seem to acknowledge, though? Typically called junior or entry level work.
- randomdata 2y agoDo we? Any time I have come across a "junior" programmer, the intent was for them to do the same work, just with recognition that they aren't (yet) very good at it and need more proficient programmers to help guide them.
- taeric 2y agoIt is not uncommon for the entry levels to be described much more in terms of "does specifically defined tasks." As you move up, you are expected to work off more and more ambiguous requests.
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- prepend 2y agoIn my experience people who care or get hung up on this term are not people I think are great programmers/coders. I like programming because it’s easy to ignore labels and just look at output to see if they are terrible or decent. Takes some time to distinguish decent or great, but it’s easy to see if someone is just horrible. I’ve never cared if I’m programmer or coder or developer or engineer. It’s not like there’s legal differences like medicine or law (some places do have engineer labels, but no states where I’ve worked). I really care about ability to make an impact and compensation. Some of the stupidest titles I’ve had were most interesting work. It seems odd to try to pick the right term as even for recruiting it’s probably better just to state the label, duties, and skills required in order to attract people.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoI know that HN policy is never to ask if someone read TFA but ... the focus of TFA is much more on how there used to (at least) two distinct tasks which got different names (and had socio-economic and gender implications); following the development of "automatic programming" (what we would call compilation today), this distinction went away, but the two terms stuck around.
- codelikeawolf 2y agoI'm with you on this one. I really don't care what my title is or what I'm referred to as long as the check clears. When people ask what I do, I say I'm a "software engineer" because I spent several years getting a BS in mechanical engineering, I've worked in several non-software jobs with "engineer" in the title, and the work is very similar. One could argue that only licensed engineers can actually call themselves "engineers", but that's not the way it works in America. From what I understand, the work of a licensed engineer is not much different from that of unlicensed engineers, it's mostly a liability and compliance thing. That's not a dig at licensed engineers, by the way. Being legally liable for your engineering work translates to requiring more rigor and attention to detail than it would when you're not on the hook for failures. One of my professors in college was a licensed engineer. He said it was a colossal PITA to maintain his license, so he let it lapse.
- bee_rider 2y ago
- ninetyninenine 2y agoIt's ranking according to skill level. 1. Software architect 2. Software engineer 3. Programmer 4. Coder The lowest level is the coder who only knows how to code. When you go higher, you have the more elite "programmer" who does the exact same thing as the coder but is more elite because he calls what he does "programming" instead of "coding" The next level is the Software Engineer who is even more skilled then the programmer because although he does the exact same thing as both the coder and the programmer he calls what he does "engineering" which he deems equivalent to what rocket engineers do when they "engineer" a rocket that flies into space, but instead of a rocket it's some website. Keep in mind that as amazing as rockets that carry humans into space are, it is not as amazing as some plain website because these "software engineers" likely get paid waay more then rocket engineers. The final, highest level is the software architect who's power is so high he doesn't even "code", "program" or "engineer" stuff anymore. Instead the software architect has the skill of "big picture reasoning" which is the skill of being able to draw boxes and circles on a white board and also drawing lines between those shapes. This is what we term "software architecture" and this is the epitome of software skill. The software architect is basically a god among software engineers. My goal in life is to become a master at drawing circles and boxes and lines. I admire these people so much.
- dudu24 2y ago> the programmer he calls what he does "engineering" which he deems equivalent to what rocket engineers do when they "engineer" a rocket that flies into space, but instead of a rocket it's some website. Bingo. The (very American) dilution of the title "engineer" has been sad to see.
- IshKebab 2y agoI wouldn't deify "real" engineering like that. It's different, and more regulated, but it isn't all harder and fancier than all programming. Find me a rocket scientist that could implement an unbounded model checker.
- anon291 2y agoIt's actually a really dumb post. There's a lot of 'real' engineering in software engineering if you step back from the latest web x.0 trends and go back to traditional software engineering (OSes, embedded, compilers, data structures, networking, etc). The problem here is that we conflate the 'latest app' (which is usually differentiated in its business model, not its software) with software development. Somewhere down the line business creation has become synonymous with software development. Of course, business creation is excellent, but it's not engineering.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoFFS people, the title includes the word "historical". TFA is not about the use of these terms today, other than tangentially. Understanding why there even were two terms is actually quite interesting, and of value for all those pontificating on what they think current use of these terms ought to be.
- psmacleod 2y agoI had a college job in the early 1980s, and my title was "Senior Coder". By that time the purpose of the particular title for my organization was to pay students less than they'd have to pay a "programmer", but if you looked at my job description, I was to turn flowcharts into coding sheets. During my annual review HR asked why I should be "Senior" and I said, "there's no programmer or analyst above me handing me flowcharts; if you want to do a reclassification review please proceed." They decided not to push it, and I decided to stick around for a little while longer because while it paid very little, it was pleasantly anarchic.
- shahzaibmushtaq 2y agoThis historical distinction has nothing to do with today's coders and programmers where a simple calculator does more than the super computers of the early days. In present times, the complete road map is something like this: coder -> Programmer -> Developer -> Engineer (Analyst) -> Architect
- randomdata 2y ago> In present times, the complete road map is something like this: More like: Programmer ─┬──→ Programmer │ └──→ Project Manager
- lowtech8 2y agoI think coder became trendy more recently and I believe it relates more to working on apps that screw the user. It kind of had that covert sounding ring to it
- bee_rider 2y agoI don’t think that is the distinction people are looking for. IMO software engineer just has too many pretentious implications… It is a bit of an interesting observation though. One of the main distinctions that come to mind when thinking of engineers is that typically they belong to professional societies with ethics codes that would seem to preclude working on some of these user-screwing features, if taken seriously.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoThis topic comes up occasionally. These days, people use the terms interchangeably. About 17 years ago, I wrote a post inspired by an article in an Indian Newspaper with more of an Indian context — more about the preference of IT grooms in matrimonial ads. This was a very personal view and lot had changed since. https://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/ https://brajeshwar.com/2007/are-you-a-programmer-or-a-coder/
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