[Cialug] Do you wish you were a web programmer?

[Nathan C. Smith]

I'm going to comment without reading either article in the entirety... /me stepping out onto soapbox on ledge.

I think everyone should learn to code - a little -  things like rules in Outlook, simple things.  Maybe learn to code something in school, like they used to teach LOGO and they teach SCRATCH today- just to understand the complexity, rules and algorithms, for the experience.

I think some people who are coders may be very good a programming, but not understand the holistic environment they operate in - look at Microsoft before the security initiative.

The same thing happens the world over, for example - car makers have these great sensors for your car tire pressure, yay, it works, ship it! - without giving any consideration to the complex environment they operate in - now it is possible to shut the car down through the receiver for the car tire pressure sensor because they did not use any kind of encryption or authentication, they just made it work so it could ship, at a low cost.  I bet you could all reflect on buggy software or cases where there were DLL or library conflicts - look at the way we took the "easy" way out of this conflict situation - by virtualizing machines, so each application can run in an individual environment to avoid conflicts with the others.

The larger context and holistic view is hopefully where the software engineers differentiate themselves from the coders.  By looking at the bigger picture and recognizing all software is fallible because it is written by people and it operates in a larger world.

People who use things like "apps" need to understand that there is this complexity, and this broader context and the software they depend on may have been written by an amateur, even a first timer.  Everyone should experience their small house of cards get knocked down once, to see what software engineering is all about.  That is why everyone should learn to code... a little.  And the people who call themselves "coders" should seek mastery, as a software engineer or get out of the game.  (Karate middle of the road, Squish!  Like grape!)

-Nate