Are you a programmer? Then go program… Or why I didn’t become one
Although I have been working with software code for thirty years, sometimes with long breaks, and sometimes I even wrote code continuously for months for money, I never became a programmer – I remained an amateur and do not plan to change anything here.
I use several programming languages at different levels: Prolog (this is my favorite), C/AL for Navision, C#, JavaScript, Java and SQL. However, in the foreground I do not have the language itself as such, but what software platform it represents and what can be built on this platform. From my point of view, a programming language is an interface to this very platform – an inference engine (Prolog), .Net (C#), a web browser (JavaScript), etc.
About twelve years ago I worked as a “programmer” in a trading company. I was still different then. I didn’t know about individual brain variability, social instincts and artificial selection. And he looked at people as such, without remembering the evolution of primates. It was a happy time, however.
And immediately something went wrong. They say that this is the norm when you don’t like one guy in a team – that this always happens, no matter where you end up. Therefore, I convinced myself this way and that – I convinced myself that I had to wait and take a closer look – perhaps, see the results, and therefore judge the person precisely by them. But nothing worked. Something small, calloused and aggressive, always fighting for its level of dominance, constantly reminded me of the character from the metaphor “if you put a thousand monkeys at a typewriter, they will write L. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in a thousand years, knocking on the keyboard randomly way or not?” And, as luck would have it, my boss is constantly poking me: “Why don’t you go to lunch with everyone? Are you some kind of elite troops?” But let me remind you that this is a matter of civilian life – of (conditional) freedom, so to speak… At first I had to go with this “printer” to lunch (I remembered now and hiccupped).
So one day, I got tired of our “Sisyphean work” – we were always sawing something endlessly – redoing the same thing, etc. And I began to look for reserves in productivity in rethinking – our business processes that we automated, approaches to coding (to use platform patterns), etc. I spoke openly with the boss in our workroom, and when I already got up to return to my place, the “printer” loudly and, as always, with irritation addressed to me: “Are you a programmer? – so go program!, and don’t chat (or something similar).” Then it only caused me bewilderment, and I remained silent.
I did not explain to him that program code is the embodiment of a thought. And it is she who is primary. And if we don’t have time for something, something doesn’t work out, we’re often dissatisfied and don’t have enough time and energy for interesting and important tasks, then perhaps we should think differently. We can look at our domain differently, notice trends in our tasks, interact with our business users (customers), develop and use our paradigm/strategy on top of the technical details of the software platform and thereby move from reactive to proactive . I, in fact, told all this to the boss, but only in our current context, in some other words.
Well, now even further into my past – to the very beginning of the 90s, when I was just learning to program. Everything was interesting – if only it was faster to be the first to sit down at the computer (both at school and at university access was not free then). But no one explained then that coding is the translation of human thoughts into machine language, and what is most important is that a “typical” programmer does not translate his own thoughts, but those that he receives as input. That professional programming is not about creating your own products and systems, but those that others need. And if you want your own, then be prepared to earn money on something else. True, then – in the late 80s and 90s – the situation was a little different than now: it was in the air then that “one is a warrior in the field.”
In all this, the answer to the essence and nature of my conflict with the “printer” is about “from the plow or from the stove,” it’s about a paid craft or a strange science, which is of no use. And this is about individual brain variability. Therefore, when choosing an area of activity, you need to be based not only on your abilities as such, but also on your own mentality (ideas about right and wrong). A great way is to come to a specialized industry event and watch people – listen to what and how they say, what excites them, what pleasantly excites or irritates them. To be able to do so is not the main thing, the main thing is to want (to become part of something).
Today I work with professionals who are almost proud of the fact that they care about the subject area “that they are programming” (for example, they confuse goods, stock keeping units and suppliers – they don’t care if they close their program script, and the proposal to understand causes irritation). Perhaps for them this is a criterion of strength – no matter what, I write cool code that can do anything. For me it's different.
As for that company and the boss, before leaving I put everything in its place. As soon as he switched to “you,” he immediately cackled that I was no match for him, but still he addressed me exclusively as “you” for the last two weeks, which he needed to work off, as usual. When I slammed that door behind me, I plunged into my own “amateur” (i.e., at my own expense) developments – checking development patterns that were “sent in the woods” behind that door, computer-aided design and coding, etc. And the once famous The company then disappeared, and now they don’t even remember about it.
