The Programmer

The Programmer
@KevlinHenney
kevlin@curbralan.com

programmer, noun
 one who writes computer programs
 a person who prepares and tests
programs for devices
 an organism capable of turning caffeine
into code
Oxford English Dictionary ∙ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary ∙ Urban Dictionary

There is an art, craft, and science to
programming that extends far beyond
the program. The act of programming
marries the discrete world of computers
with the fluid world of human affairs.
Programmers mediate between the
negotiated and uncertain truths of
business and the crisp, uncompromising
domain of bits and bytes and higher
constructed types.

Hacking and painting have a lot in
common. In fact, of all the different types
of people I've known, hackers and
painters are among the most alike.
Paul Graham
"Hackers and Painters"
http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

Hacking and painting have a lot in
common. In fact, of all the different types
of people I've known, hackers and
painters are among the most alike.
What hackers and painters have in
common is that they're both makers.
Along with composers, architects, and
writers, what hackers and painters are
trying to do is make good things.
Paul Graham
"Hackers and Painters"
http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

Agile models are paintings,
not photographs
Don Wells
http://www.agile-process.org/model.html

Agile models are not paintings;
if anything, they are sketches

People in high tech take pride in their work.
They are individuals who see the details of
the things they produce in the light of the
trials and triumphs they experience while
creating products. In the courage of
creation, they find a place to hang their
individuality. Programmers and techno types
appreciate elegant, spare code and the
occasional well-turned architectural hack.
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searles and David Weinberger
The Cluetrain Manifesto

Habitability is the characteristic of
source code that enables programmers,
coders, bug-fixers, and people coming
to the code later in its life to
understand its construction and
intentions and to change it comfortably
and confidently.

Habitability makes a place livable, like
home. And this is what we want in
software — that developers feel at
home, can place their hands on any
item without having to think deeply
about where it is.

https://twitter.com/chrisoldwood/status/579215003531763712

Cargo cult programming is a style of
computer programming characterized by the
ritual inclusion of code or program
structures that serve no real purpose.
Cargo cult programming can also refer to the
results of applying a design pattern or
coding style blindly without understanding
the reasons behind that design principle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming

I have yet to see any problem,
however complicated, which,
when you looked at it in the
right way, did not become still
more complicated.
Anderson's Law

Eschew the monumental.
Shun the Epic. All the guys
who can paint great big
pictures can paint great
small ones.
Ernest Hemingway

Are human beings
"noble in reason" and
"infinite in faculty" as
William Shakespeare
famously wrote?
Perfect, "in God's
image," as some
biblical scholars have
asserted?

I think that three of the best-documented tenets of economic
psychology can help explain why we collectively took on the
loans that events have proved were so unwise.
The first is materialism. [...]
The second is money. [...]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627595.800-
economic-recovery-needs-psychological-recovery.html

I think that three of the best-documented tenets of economic
psychology can help explain why we collectively took on the
loans that events have proved were so unwise.
The first is materialism. [...]
The second is money. [...]
Finally, we have the most spectacular deviation from
rationality: the massive myopia with which we approach
choices between good things that will arrive at different points
in the future. Humans are quite hopeless at such "inter-
temporal choice", consistently choosing to take small benefits
sooner rather than large benefits later.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627595.800-
economic-recovery-needs-psychological-recovery.html

Although individuals and some markets display
it, economists dislike it on the grounds that it is
"irrational". That's because under hyperbolic
discounting, a person has a strong preference
for getting something today rather than
tomorrow, but only a weak preference for
getting it on day 100 rather than day 101; yet
when day 100 arrives, they will strongly prefer to
get the resource immediately.
"Valuing the future... you're doing it wrong"
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21228354.600-a-better-way-to-price-the-future-takes-hold.html

Stop Overpromising and Overshooting
We want to do everything all at once. Grand plans!
Sweeping gestures! Epic 23-book fantasy cycles! Don’t
overreach. Concentrate on what you can complete.
Temper risk with reality.
Chuck Wendig
"25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing"
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/01/03/25-things-writers-should-stop-doing/

You have to finish things —
that's what you learn from,
you learn by finishing things.
Neil Gaiman

Social scientists have long assumed that it's impossible to process
more than one string of information at a time. The brain just can't
do it. But many researchers have guessed that people who appear
to multitask must have superb control over what they think about
and what they pay attention to.
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html

So [Clifford] Nass and his colleagues, Eyal Ophir and Anthony
Wagner, set out to learn what gives multitaskers their edge. What
is their gift?

"We kept looking for what they're better at, and we didn't find it."

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of
electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory
or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to
complete one task at a time.

One reason programmers dislike meetings
so much is that they're on a different type
of schedule from other people. Meetings
cost them more.
Paul Graham
"Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

One reason programmers dislike meetings
so much is that they're on a different type
of schedule from other people. Meetings
cost them more.
For someone on the maker's schedule,
having a meeting is like throwing an
exception. It doesn't merely cause you to
switch from one task to another; it
changes the mode in which you work.
Paul Graham
"Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people
get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy
junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s
offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and
high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after
decision without paying a biological price.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html

The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder
each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for
shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways.

One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead
of expending the energy to first think through the
consequences. The other shortcut is the ultimate energy
saver: do nothing.

The four
conditions that
characterize wise
crowds:
diversity of
opinion,
independence,
decentralization,
and aggregation.

There’s little correlation between a
group’s collective intelligence and
the IQs of its individual members.
But if a group includes more
women, its collective intelligence
rises.
"What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women"
http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/

Graphic by Sebastian Hermida
http://sbastn.com/2009/06/typing-is-not-the-bottleneck/

Our task is not to find the
maximum amount of
content in a work of art.
Our task is to cut back
content so that we can see
the thing at all.
Susan Sontag

The Programmer

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