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I was recently reading a book regarding Software engineering and for the most part, I was reading the thoughts of myself when I started programming and progressed through my career by making lots of mistakes but learning new things.
One of the most poignant points of the books was this one:
"Computer programmer," like "carpenter," is a skill, not a job.
That made me think because if you put in this perspective you can think that the output of the computer programmers job is measured by the quality of the product and not by other metrics like lines of code or commits pushed.
We are artisans that practice the skill of programming. Some may be good at this skill some not. But it's not the only skill in the world and certainly not the best one.
What do you think?
Top comments (2)
Yeah, I'd definitely agree with that one. It requires a lot of technical skill and problem solving to do computer programming. And just like any skill, we hone our craft. We get better at it with time and experience. Calling computer programming a "job" downplays the art and intensive thinking that goes through writing a usable and useful program. What programmers do are often overlooked because others do not know what it takes to write such programs.
To the untrained eye, programming is merely a job with a high demand nowadays; otherwise, programming is a skill that is worthy of respect from peers of the same field.
It's like writing - but pre-Industrial age. There were a specialist class of people who wrote, 'scribes' would be the profession.
That's not to say that we don't have writers now - we even have specialisms in writing, and writing teachers. But everyone can write, to some level or other.
In a way, everyone is a programmer these days if they can use Excel to solve a problem. This democratization of the skill will just continue.