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Culture of Computer Programmers

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ewemoa:
Have you folks seen the following Grady Booch lecture?

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/05/28/video-booch/

He seems to have a rather different opinion about how much computers (and/or software?) matter -- or that is the impression I got from parts of his talk...

Paul Keith:
I'm very aware that computers are but scrapes of metal and silicon, and ultimately, that's what they are. They are obsoleted after a few years, and that hot 'smart' machine you're typing on now, will be scrap metal in the relatively near future.

I'm also very aware that ultimately not of it matters. People were around when they didn't have anything other than sticks and rocks, and are still around now that those sticks and rock are software and hardware.

I don't feel any of the code I write changes the world. In fact, quite the opposite. A lot of what us techies do is self-sustaining. A lot of what we do on computers is FOR computers, and only immediately relevant to computers.

I'm not saying they are completely useless, and that they aren't used for important things. But when we really face reality, 90% (if not more) of what we do on a computer is only relevant to the limited world of computing itself.

Yet despite all that, writing code and playing with commandline's etc, is 'home'. It's what I grew up with and it's simply how my mind knows to function and communicate.
I wrote my first lines of code when I was only 7 years old or so. I don't see it as a job or a hobby, it's a language, and a way of thinking.
I often notice that while I'm typing up code I don't even think about what I'm putting down, it just flows. Just like speech.
When I'm coding or doing other geeky stuff, I just feel like I'm in a natural environment. When I'm outside talking to people, I feel uncomfortable and like I don't belong. It's really as simple as that, I think. While coding can definitively be fun, questions such as "what do you think is most fun about being a developer", are missing the point. I think it's simply just a natural state of being for some people. :)
Maybe over the years my brain has just rewired itself as a computer interface. :D



-Gothi[c] (January 27, 2009, 01:24 AM)
--- End quote ---

Lol, I can see why your username is Gothi[c].  ;D (No offense intended)

fenixproductions:
2Paul Keith
You stole a lot from my thoughts ;) Good post, keep it going!

One more thing worth to mention is that being a programmer sometimes allows you to gain more knowledge than particular beings.

Ex. When you are writing an application with purpose of being used by businessmen you have to be not only a coder but businessman too. You have to know what they know and understand a little bit of psychology: how are they thinking or behave. This knowledge might be focused on one area only but you have to be better in it than the user.

In the other hand, all programmers I met had one other thing in common: very extended knowledge about many (I should shout MANY) things. They are good in IT, of course, but also in: grammar and orthography (Polish ones), physics or math. They know good books, movies or philosophy. And, maybe because of analytical way of thinking, they were mostly unbelievers.

Gothi[c]:
He seems to have a rather different opinion about how much computers (and/or software?) matter -- or that is the impression I got from parts of his talk...

--- End quote ---

It's an interesting talk but I'm not convinced as to how much it matters. But then there's different levels of 'mattering' :) 'mattering' is a relative concept like time. :D I think it doesn't matter in the big picture ; we'll be around, software or not. ( Actually, he mentions some really scary stuff software has done from surveillance to making more destructive bombs, if anything it'll kill us  :P )

That said, there is no doubt that a lot of our modern lives touch software in some way or another, and that this will be increasingly so, and that a lot of how we do things has changed because of it.
Perhaps the real core of the matter is that, like he says, software development is hard and takes so much effort (the number of 100 million lines of code was dropped, somewhere in that talk), that, when you're actually writing software, only a very very tiny percentage of that will ultimately only matter in the grand total.
What I meant with writing software for software, or using computers for computers, is stuff like, what ide or text editor am i most productive with, having to install anti-virus software, what window manager to use, what os to use, etc...
So, each line of code you write matters pretty much nothing on it's own. It's likely that each piece of software you write doesn't either, unless you're working for some fancy research team or company. Most of the time you are fiddling with stuff that deals with how to make your computer experience in itself better, etc... 

The result is using a computer not to accomplish anything, but simply for the sake of using a computer, and accomplishing stuff is a side effect that kind of happens when you put everything everyone does everywhere together.

ewemoa:
accomplishing stuff is a side effect that kind of happens when you put everything everyone does everywhere together.
-Gothi[c] (January 27, 2009, 04:11 AM)
--- End quote ---

 :Thmbsup:

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