Skip to main content

Programming is a Craft (And that's a good thing)

Programming is a craft. You are building something. The modern languages have given the programmer great ownership of the craft. Before it was more like an assembly and one programmer was responsible for one cog in a big machine and few programmers, the elite, saw the whole machine, understood the whole craft. But now with languages like Ruby and Python, the massive power at the hands of the programmer bring the whole thing back to a craft. It is something you do with your hands. It is creative, like writing and while not physical or tactile, it is built piece by piece.

The connection is deep and actually obscured by the way programming is taught. Because programming originated from a mathematical discipline and math has mostly lost its craft origins and now is taught more as an intellectual pursuit, it is often forgotten that math is but a tool itself. Not an end goal. Math is used to do things with it. Calculous to measure trajectories of objects. Geometry is essential for architecture and building. Because Math as a tool, or tools, have become so important, it is a discipline onto itself. And it can solve problems we haven't asked yet. Computer Science is a bit like that, but programming is more like building something. If computation science is like geometry programming is beyond architecture to include building.

The beauty of a program comes from its functionality as much as its cleverness. Like a house. It can be beautiful and architecturally brilliant, but if it fails as a house it fails, however if the architecture enhances the house, then it's a masterpiece. Too much emphasis can be given to the algorithms of computation and not enough at honing the craft.

The care you take for a program is a beautiful thing. The desire to build it right, is a beautiful thing. To see it survive updates with minimal changes, to see it endure, to have its construction push you to learn new techniques and new ways to look, new paradigms, is a beautiful thing.

And like a craft, you hone it bit, by bit, each time raising your level once more. But the skill is not in how much you know, or even how much you've mastered, but in how you hone that craft. Do you value it? Do you express yourself through it honestly? Does it open you up like a meditation, or challenge you like a competitor?

Craft is a beautiful thing. Yet how do you convey that beauty to a potential employer? How do you avoid those clog-maker-seekers that will crush the beauty of your craft, thinking the programmer an interchangeable cog as well?

Come to think of it. What is not craft in one way or another?

Maybe I'm just a craft-man, and what I do is craft... one way or another...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Medieval Economics can teach us about tariffs.

As a teen, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) with my friends. This started an interest in the medieval period that led to me taking a medieval history class in college just to understand the period more. Over the years I've also read great books like " Dungeon, Fire and Sword " about the crusades (I recommend the book) and yet with all that knowledge it wasn't until recently that it occurred to me I had a completely wrong understanding of economics in the Medieval Period. "Viking helmets, sword and footwear" by eltpics is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 In my D&D games, players who are adventures battling monsters and creatures would need equipment and on the trips to town, they'd get resupplied with their adventuring necessities. I'd run these moments referencing my imagination of what it must have been and fantasy books I'd read. There be an inn with a raucous bar, a gruffly black-smith, if a city also a weapon and armor sm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Testing with Cucumber, Sinatra and Capybara

Everything you need to know There are many elements you need to simultaneously learn to do effective testing of your code. Because some of these elements are very simple a lot of explanations just jump over what you need to know and give them up as obvious. Let’s start with a list of the things you need to learn: Gherkin (the language of Cucumber) ——> super easy Capybara (the DSL that controls the browser tests) Rspec (the DSL in which the actual pass/fail tests are written.) None of these are hard. But having to learn all at the same time can seem daunting. But it’s not! It’s easy peasy but takes time. :-/ It took me three days to get a handle on this. And I hope by reading this you’ll get a handle on it much much quicker. Let’s start with Cucumber first. Cucumber Five things you need to know about Cucumber: Cucumber tests are located on a features folder that have plain text files with a .feature extension and written in Gherkin . The .feature files contain t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Los NiNis & The Slackers

NiNis are the youth segment of the population 16-35 that neither study nor work ( Ni estudian, Ni trabajan). They are the Spanish and Latin-American equivalent of the slacker. They typically live at home with their parents or other family and are sometimes referred to as leeches on family resources. I posit that the NiNis like the slackers before them are mislabeled as lazy by society and incorrectly perceived as leeches or drains on normal society. Slackers were of my generation. Smart people that seemed unable to focus and apply themselves to take work seriously; they spent a lot of their time on seemly wasted hobbies like video games, making videos, or writing blogs (many of which are now rather decent careers). But thinking of them as lazy is wrong. These are people that want to work, sometimes desperately, but they just don't see the point. They're not lazy, just unmotivated. I recently got Jane McGonigal's book 'Reality is Broken' and I agree with her. It is ...
Post a Comment
Read more