No such thing as “real programming” (2015)

http://www.brightball.com/development/no-such-thing-as-real-programming

by yumaikas • 10 years ago

113 104 10 years ago

captn3m02• 10 years ago

This hits home for me. I started web development in PHP, went up and down the ladder a lot, but still continue to do PHP (Mostly Laravel these days). However, I am fascinated by the web in general and all the abstractions that make it stand up. More specifically, things like REST, HTTP, sessions, and all the web APIs that you consider for granted on the browser. Even things like CORS.

The nice thing about PHP is that it lets you play with these abstractions _even when you are starting out_. For eg, a redirect in ruby/sinatra would be `redirect https://google.com`, but stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); variant[0]. PHP doesn't abstract out the web, but lets you build on top of it. Its close enough to C so you know what is happening and how things are working (or atleast its easier to figure out), and still dynamic enough to get shit done.

There are problems with PHP's design, sure. But these are getting fewer and fewer with things like PHP7/Composer and the entire ecosystem still evolving. And believe it or not: there are problems with _every programming language_. Just pick the right tool for the job, will you.

[0]: I know comparing sinatra to PHP isn't ideal, but I am yet to see anyone code in pure CGI in Ruby.

downer65• 10 years ago

The 2 things that create the most beef about PHP are simply:

  1. Type Safety (string? int? boolean?)

  2. The Runtime Engine (apache? nginx? linux? windows? what file system?)

The flexible nature of these two concepts, leaves any given PHP script resting on shifting sands of uncertainty, which is really the only thing that leaves people feeling inadequate. The willingness to compromise, and accept a runtime where it's hard to debug, permits programmers to put themselves in situations where they'll have a hard time providing a conclusive answer in succinct terms, to non-technical folks disinterested in obscure details beyond the scope of one's external field or daily interests.

It's not because of impostor syndrome, or any sort of psychological underdog complex. It's simply the awareness that there are gaps in what's often expected to be a hermetic seal. And knowing about that, would gnaw at the edges of just about anybody's confidence at a subliminal level.

Joeri2• 10 years ago

Every programming language has differences across platforms and servers, and the dynamic ones all have the type safety aspects. Those two arguments cannot be the reason because then javascript, python or ruby devs would be susceptible to the same.

lucideer• 10 years ago

Your observation on abstraction is interesting. I've always considered PHP to be quite the opposite.

e.g. Going from PHP to NodeJS, NodeJS is a lot more direct and less abstracted (handling the request directly, reading the request data incrementally and handling reader state, setting headers and then explicitly writing to the buffer, handling connection state, etc.) - note I do mean NodeJS here, not something like Express

another e.g. PSR-7 I find is, counterintuitively, actually much less abstracted than raw PHP built-ins as it goes out if it's way to map the interfaces to the stack as intended, rather than completely arbitrary weird abstractions. Like the retrieval of query parameters being entirely separate and unrelated to retrieval of the body payload, whereas PHP tends to sort of conflate these things in $_GET/$_POST/$_REQUEST and then doesn't really have obvious intuitive handling of non-x-form-url-encoded payloads. And don't get me started on query string array handling.

I do completely agree with the article though, and I still use PHP a lot. Voluntarily.

But I just found your specific observation surprising.

captn3m02• 10 years ago

Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams. However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without something like Express and just use http.createServer.

The PHP abstractions are not always clear as you rightly point out (REQUEST = GET+POST+COOKIE...), but they are vastly different "magic" that you see in the Ruby land, for eg where you would rarely be ever thinking about cookies at all.

TazeTSchnitzel• 10 years ago

stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); variant

Which is actually a broken abstraction, because in most PHP SAPIs that doesn't actually spit out a header line directly. Instead, it's parsed into its components, and PHP additionally sets the HTTP status code to a redirection one.

mattvanhorn• 10 years ago

Real programming ended with Mel.

jeff_marshall• 10 years ago

Tell that to the people who debug new CSP/BSPs using binary search on "which line did the boot sequence make it to" using GPIO to an LED.

Thankfully, most of us don't spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing these days (even in the embedded world).

I also feel for anyone who ends up using an upside-down air can to debug shoddy solder joints on a BGA device ;)

njharman• 10 years ago

Be enlightened http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

xjay5• 10 years ago

My first thought was that "real programmers" are those who deal with floating-points..

"God is real, unless declared integer."

lxe• 10 years ago

When I first entered the workforce I started off doing embedded Linux programming. Device drivers, kernel hacks, small systems with limited resources, FPGAs, etc... This was difficult, and posed lots of challenges.

I ended up jumping all the way to the other end of the "stack" -- web front-ends. Webdev has been a side-hobby of a sort for quite a while, and I pretty much expected it to be a lot simpler than the low level systems programming that I've been doing.

I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields.

I think the entire notion that one type of programming is more "real" than others comes from lack of perspective. Once you dive deep into more than one development layer, use case, architecture, language, or community, you realize that the challenges each one faces are as varied, unique, and interesting as the rest of them.

trentmb• 10 years ago

I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields.

I'm a math major turned 'full stack' dev with an eye on embedded dev as my prize- I needed this comment.

notalaser2• 10 years ago

It's extremely true. I occasionally joke about how web programming isn't really programming, but it really is nothing but a joke.

Making a LED blink on a microcontroller is just about as difficult as showing an intermittent alert in a browser window. It may seem harder because you need to know a little more about the abstraction layers underneath, but those are things that you can pick up just as quickly as JavaScript.

Designing a high-throughput data interface system in FPGA (which I'm doing now) is at least as hard as doing a high-throughput back-end infrastructure for a web service. I can barely do the former -- I sure as fuck can't do the latter right now, regardless of how "real" my programming skills are. When I read through a paper on the latter topic, or watch a presentation, I can mostly understand what it's about and appreciate the technical prowess, but doing something like that myself would likely be a quick lesson in humility.

If you like what you're doing and you're creating programs that do useful, or at least spectacular things, you're a real programmer.

ktRolster2• 10 years ago

Really, there is nothing wrong with being a "PHP Programmer," or even a WordPress "programmer," if you can find people to pay you for it. Well done, that counts as succeeding in life.

On the other hand, if someone has spent years feeling bad that they don't know lower-level programming, they need to get over themselves and spend a few weekends learning assembly or something. There's no reason to feel bad about this, take a bit of time to expel your ignorance.

amelius• 10 years ago

Well done, that counts as succeeding in life.

Yes, as defined by most people.

Succeeding in life in the eyes of a select group of people including yourself, is something else entirely.

noir_lord• 10 years ago

Completely agree, I'm currently a PHP programmer (and quite a lot of Python and JS and some other stuff).

I grew up programming and had my BASIC, Pascal, C++, Delphi and C# phases, I like web development (generally, the tooling sometimes sucks but as a platform you have global reach), I'm also well past the point where I worry about "real" programming or whether I'm a "real" programmer - I can solve any problem I run into by research or buying a good book, there are domains I'm completely oblivious too (for example 3D programming and quite a lot of the machine learning stuff).

The systems I build solve problems and provide value, that value might be in making someones life easier (which is what my current side project will do) or automating a business process (my favourite was an engineer management system I built for a small company a few years ago, they've now grown to ~20 engineers and are still using it, they've filed 3 bugs in 3 years - literally the best work I ever did and at the time I thought it was average).

Programming is such a vast field and there is more out there than you could learn deeply in a life time so I try to stay abreast of what's going on by watching conferences online and not worry too much about measuring my e-peen. (latest one is Code Mesh https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWbHc_FXPo2jB6IZ887vL... which has some stunning stuff).

If I have a particular strength it's that I enjoy the process of meshing what the client thinks they need with what they actually need and finding the intersect, often clients don't realise what they can gain from software and the simple business suggestions can be huge, I wrote a system for a company that used NCR pads they had to get custom printed, this required the field engineers to keep the pads in stock, they where filling them out by hand for every job and it was expensive and error prone, I suggested instead that we generate the PDF's with everything prefilled in and duplicate pages which are sent to the engineers by email, they can get them printed wherever they are either on site at the clients or any place that does print from disk, this saved them a lot of money, it hadn't occurred to the client that this was possible - so now they assign jobs to an engineer, the system generates all the paperwork for that week and they just require a signature from the client who keeps one copy while they keep the other.

sklogic16• 10 years ago

Just admit it. Most of the challenges in the frontend development are only there because of a horrible overengineering of this entire stack. It was supposed to be easy.

bryanlarsen2• 10 years ago

The Web is a full-spectrum application delivery mechanism that allows for completely untrusted, actively malicious programs to be run, and it evolved from a mechanism to display static documents. Of course it's going to be strangely designed.

Given those requirements, your only choices are Java Sandboxed Apps, Flash and the Web. Which would you choose?

pjc503• 10 years ago

I've done most of the spectrum from Perl webdev to chip design, with a good chunk of embedded C and C++ in the middle. I basically agree, and I think there's roughly these types of challenge:

- Inadequate or high-effort tools. This is half the challenge of the embedded world, and the cause of "I've destroyed my tools with my tools!" https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

- Complicated business requirements ("do this every second Tuesday if there is an R in the month, but not if the customer is using the US VAT system and not if the product is a type of cake")

- Critical system requirements (remember, using Java to control your nuclear reactor violates the license). People working in this environment can easily get elitist about it, until you look at their code and find Toyota spaghetti.

- Problems that require Actual Maths or Actual CS, with known solutions. Rare in the webdev world until someone remembers about ACID; more common in the embedded world if you need control systems.

- Problems with unknown solutions. Actually extremely rare; often the first line of attack involves Matlab or Excel or some other "not real programming" technique. Often the smart domain experts you need to solve the problem are not also very good at software engineering.

IME the first two take up 80-90% of the working day. The third is only applicable to some industries.

Different people are better at different types of challenge. This doesn't matter unless you're trying to construct some sort of total ordering over human beings in order to feel better about yourself.

sklogic16• 10 years ago

Funny. Most of my career was about problems with no known solutions. I wonder why people keep calling them "rare". After all, why even bother solving a solved problen?

And yes, most useful prototyping tools for me were far from C++ and alike - I used Maxima, Mathematica, various Lisps with tons of batteries. Also not a "real programming".

s_kilk• 10 years ago

- Complicated business requirements ("do this every second Tuesday if there is an R in the month, but not if the customer is using the US VAT system and not if the product is a type of cake")

And then you realise there's no consistent definition of "cake" in the system. And when people in the business say "US VAT system" they actually mean "Regulatory system XYZ", not actually anything to do with the US.

Sigh.

ownagefool5• 10 years ago

You hit the nail on the head with the Actual CS problems. Storing data is probably the only complex area of web deevelopment, but it's something that 90% of developers seem to punt on.

petra2• 10 years ago

> - Inadequate or high-effort tools.

This makes sense for embedded: you want to save every penny since it's a high volume business, the chip manufacturer wants to save every penny , there's a huge amount of variety in chips - so in the end development is hard. Without all those requirements, heck maybe something like the arduino/mbed would have become popular among professionals.

But as for webdev ? not so much. The critical factors are time-to-market and development cost. And in the domain of web based business apps, we already have useful high-level tools[1], and it seems to be technically possible to improve the situation in consumer facing apps too.

So where are the tools ?

[1]http://ww2.mendix.com/rs/mendix/images/gartner-magic-quadran...

bryanlarsen2• 10 years ago

Agreed. I've done over 10 years in both embedded programming and full-stack web, and I often wish for the simplicity of embedded programming.

Of course, embedded programming has gotten a lot more complicated too. When I started, we had to fit our programs into 4K of ROM. These days an embedded program often includes a full Linux stack.

tluyben2• 10 years ago

I guess people generally call 'real programming' something that isn't connecting up CRUD forms/pages. And although I would not call it 'real programming' as a term, I do not see that kind of thing as a challenge or interesting at all. I have made / helped make 1000s of sites over the years (in many different technologies and CMS's) and most of them are just incredibly boring and require no kind of programming skills really. So in that sense they are not 'real programming'. If you can install WP, Google CSS changes for the theme you buy or get from the designer and then Google the plugins + few lines of code changes to make it work then that is not 'real programming' in a sense. But it does pay the bills and it pays them well.

I am not sure about other countries, but in NL and DE, for big companies, I see the complex & inflexible (Java) Enterprise CMS software being replaced by WP. Often not openly and company wide, but departmentally for sure. We get asked to consume the content in the 'big corporate' CMS via a webservice or even scraping and when that's done and the WP site runs and can be used to run that part of the site, they ask corporate hosting to do some proxy passing and rewriting. To illustrate (I cannot name names ...), let's say you have an international online retailer and the ECMS contains a different site per country like:

https://retailer.com/nl/... https://retailer.com/de/... etc for all countries they are in.

Then the NL dep asks us to recreate their /nl/ site in WP with the content from the ECMS and then they proxypass/rewrite /nl/ to the new server which contains the WP installation.

Why? Because WP allows, for 'low cost' and 'no real programming' to add all the features they want and to allow workflow-free fast updates when they have a special or deals or contest or whatever specific to that country. Not to mention people understand how to use it right away; no courses needed. With the ECMS that all runs via the head office and that workflow is too hard to change so this is much cheaper/easier. Sometimes they don't even really notify the head office but just do it on their own servers. This same thing happens in many companies / institutions that have many 'sub-sites' managed by different regions/countries/verticals.

It works, it makes clients happy and the fact I don't like WP (at all) and the fact I find this kind of thing rather boring not to create code (like you would in Django or Ruby) is not really interesting; the average 'corporate' WP site we deliver has 1 custom WP file with functions the guys who set everything up and integrate the design reuse and (rarely) append.

I would say that if I was to name something real or not real programming, this would be it. And yet it makes a lot of money and, more importantly, it makes clients happy & productive without extremely long processes of implementation.

Edit: Other than that I agree with the article; it is a matter of taste though. Like said I would not call these things 'real or non-real (fake)' programming but I do choose to not do most of this work myself as I like embedded and native mobile work better. That keeps clients happy too anyway.

Joeri2• 10 years ago

As you have to be cleverer to debug a piece of code than to write it there is a case to be made that production grade code should be rather boring to write, so as to remain maintainable.

CM302• 10 years ago

This is why WordPress recommends a few things that annoy a lot of programmers, like using the longer if/while/foreach syntax and mixing PHP with HTML code. It's not elegant, but it's a lot more readable for people who haven't actually programmed much before. So that people whose knowledge of web coding is mostly HTML and CSS related can figure out what to edit without programming expertise or even syntax highlighting.

It's also one of the reasons WordPress (and quite a few other CMS systems that are sometimes looked down upon in the development world) caught on... because they were easy to modify and mess around with for people withot prior programming experience.

fallous2• 10 years ago

When I'm engaged in rapid prototyping or testing an idea, I almost exclusively rely on the stack I'm familiar with that fits the problem domain. But I don't consider that "real code" given the very nature of what I'm doing and the understanding that once the problem has a solution, that solution can be applied to whatever stack BEST fits the situation.

The author seems to engage in the same behavior, but conflates the "get things done fast" with the production solution.

If you're a good programmer and your preferred tool is PHP, then you're engaged in "real programming." If you insist on using PHP as a deployment solution because it's what you're familiar with rather than because it is an appropriate/optimal solution to the problem then you're engaged in laziness.

A good programmer can adapt their mental models and adopt the tools necessary for the problem domain. A bad one always has an excuse for why their comfort justifies tool choice.

dietrichepp• 10 years ago

I'd like to use a broad definition of "appropriate/optimal". I could imagine PHP being optimal only because you already have PHP talent in house.

fallous2• 10 years ago

Yes, if PHP is appropriate to the task at hand AND you have an existing set of PHP talent in-house then it would be hard to argue that isn't an optimal solution.

However, if PHP is not appropriate, that in-house PHP talent does not change the fact that PHP is the wrong tool.

ktRolster2• 10 years ago

If your in house 'talent' can't learn a new web framework without too much trouble, then it's questionable to call it talent.

I've never worked at a company that used Delphi, but I have complete confidence in my ability to use the language. If a person doesn't feel confident in their ability to pick up C, they are missing something from their toolkit.

falcolas• 10 years ago

If web developers think they have it bad for being razzed about not being real programmers, they should talk to SDET folks.

dschiptsov2• 10 years ago

Tell that to Linus.)

dschiptsov2• 10 years ago

I see. To be able to write world-class kernel code (or projects like nginx) a programmer must posses at least practical knowledge of advanced data-structures and algorithms (including implementation details), machine architectures and automata theory (FSMs for protocols) - subjects about which typical PHP/JS coder have no idea. That's why they are so sure that there is nothing beyond their amazing coding skills out there.

0xcde4c3db• 10 years ago

The term "full-stack" has related problems. Most people, regardless of where they center their expertise, have some idea of a layer of the stack beyond which is Somebody Else's Problem.

lowglow2• 10 years ago

Can confirm, am fullstack: Physical layer is someone else's problem.

Cyph0n• 10 years ago

Actually, even the three layers above that are likely someone else's problem (data link,network, and transport). Full-stack usually means knowledge of the application layer i.e. HTTP and client side.

xjay5• 10 years ago

Programming is ultimately about systems.

There's a recent talk [1] by Mary Shaw from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). It's about what has happened since the NATO conference in 1968 (dubbed the Software Crisis), and what engineering means in software engineering.

According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers, and ~2.5 million highly trained software engineers, and there's a need to get more programmers into the engineering aspects.

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 There's a link to the slides in the description of the video.

morgante• 10 years ago

According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers

I don't believe that statistic for a second, unless we're using some convoluted definition of "programmers" which includes anyone who can open Microsoft Word.

That would mean half the labor force can program. Ludicrous.

Looking at the slides[1], I'm pretty sure you interpreted that wrong. There are 90M end users of software, not 90M "casual" programmers.

[1] http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KE...

xjay5• 10 years ago

I'll correct some things: 1) The speaker said projection, not survey. 2) I interchanged "developers" and "programmers" at the top of the slide, but the speaker lumps "programming like things" into the 90M "end users," which among others include pretty much all the web people (scripting languages, database interfacing, web server security, etc).

Please see the relevant part at 49:50 [1], but I'll bring it in next.

The speaker pretty much defines "end users"/casual developers as people who do programming like things; "There are something like 90M people out there who are doing 'programming like things'; they are building databases, they are building spreadsheets, they are using scripting languages, they are building sophisticated websites--what are we doing to help them?"

It's a broad category, but I think the confusion is that programming is not simply about writing code, it also includes the overall architecture, and design of a system.

So what I get from this is that end users means anyone who didn't go through the academic channels to learn the engineering aspects, and that's who they need to reach. The speaker had a link to their software engineering programs at CMU [2] in an earlier slide.

Also, see the context in view of the stackoverlow survey--which doesn't add up if you look at the numbers, but the speaker explains it's because some people reported in more than once.--It sought to be an example of how "end users" end up doing "programming like things."

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8

[2] Software Engineering Masters Programs http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

This article links to this powerful story that's worth a read and has some life lessons in it:

http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-...

In gratitude, I'm going to be a nice guy that avoids the PHP vs "real" languages part of the discussion. :)

maxerickson3• 10 years ago

You didn't though.

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

Oh no, I did. Anyone seeing prior posts would spot the contrast. ;)

brightball5• 10 years ago

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

I wrote that up mostly as an explanation for a lot of local people who'd asked me for the whole story over the years.

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

If I remember & stabilize my own situation, I plan to eventually ask you for that story you hinted at that few would believe. I have a few of my own like that which made me say agnostic rather than atheist. It was like... something... was making possibilities connect.

Another time, though. :)

kalzium2• 10 years ago

omg I know I'll be down voted for this but... ugh, this guy hasn't gotten anything and it's so super sad. I've a similar background like him, but I kinda felt embarassed reading his post. Mannnnn... you can argue all day long what programming is about and go crey crey on forums and write stupid blog posts... but WHY the hell waste time with that if you could build something awesome in the meantime with all the things that you know and all the tools that you got - like argh come back when you build something awesome I dunno... :/

brightball5• 10 years ago

Totally understandable point of view. I enjoy writing as a hobby so that's the main reason I'm willing to invest the time. This one in particular was because I read the other piece and it bothered me enough that I couldn't sleep.

Occasionally I do some paid blogging for Codeship too.

kalzium2• 10 years ago

I'm sorry I was half asleep and drunk. I have no idea what I was talking about.

brightball5• 10 years ago

Accepted :)

xjay5• 10 years ago

Alan Kay: "It turns out there was this term called 'coding' back when I started, and the term called 'programming'.

So a programmer actually wrote flowcharts. That was the high-level language used back then. These flowcharts would work on any computer, and what a coder was, was a human compiler for those flowcharts."

Alan Kay @ SAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c

The quote is from the last few minutes, before the video cuts off.

epalmer• 10 years ago

I still diagram flowcharts. Usually to convey to one of my internal customers how we envision interfacing with a 3rd party system or solving some complex business logic.

I diagram a lot of things. Mostly for my benefit. I have struggled over the years with what symbol do I use for X but now I just pick a rectangle or predefined process rectangle and label it well. Diagramming helps me get my internal thoughts out and makes the systems I write better and less error prone.

steverb• 10 years ago

Diagramming also has the added benefit of being a more precise way of communication how a system works. I've found that a 30 minute discussion can be turned into a 2 minute explanation with the use of a diagram.

Personally, I can't even really think about complex business/application/system logic without drawing it out on a whiteboard.

xjay5• 10 years ago

This was also a point brought up in a recent talk [1] on software engineering, and what has happened since the "software crisis" was recognized in 1968.

The speaker, Mary Shaw, talks about Design Guidance, and how a decision chart is "a better organization of a body of design decision knowledge" [starts 27:40] and how we still, desperately, need something like that, and that there aren't any better ways to communicate such knowledge, that the speaker is aware of, than "this ancient chart."

(UML is mentioned later, but under the context that it is dying, which was probably a good thing.)

[1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8

bcarlyle• 10 years ago

People like building their own solutions because it is way more fun then just installing Wordpress and adding some plugins. But sometimes Wordpress is more effective.

I've learned a lot about programming from a friend I worked on a startup with. But the business part suffered since the focus was on coding instead of the experience for the end user.

I have friends who are brilliant programmers who made excellent startup employees and friends who know little about programming who are excellent startup founders. I’m not even sure the best programmers make the best startup founders. A friend of mine was amazed when I showed him how to view source code on a website. His startup just raised a million dollars.

I think this has to do with the fact that people who don't program can't focus on the code. They focus on solving the problem.

Sometimes the right solution might be to build my own solutions but since thousands of people are constantly telling me that I'm not a real programmer I doubt my own ability to do it.

People complaining that web developers aren't real programmers keeps web developers from learning programming. The thought that web developers aren't programmers paradoxically keeps me from becoming "a real programmer".

Because my work doesn't count as real programming I have to start every new "real programming" challenge thinking that I don't really know what I'm doing. This creates doubt that limits my ability.

I feel confident in my ability to build what I want on the web but I'm actively doubting if I'm a real programmer.

Most of the web development work I do involves building interactive programs for helping people cope with mental health problems. My clients only care if I solve their problems. Previously we had a super advanced custom built system that was a mess to deal with. I recently switched back to Wordpress because it is way more effective.

I also think another reason developers don't like Wordpress is that it levels the playing field between people who can and can't program. Suddenly anyone can do what it took you years to learn.

People telling me I can't program because I work on the web makes me a shittier programmer because it makes me nervous when I write code that is logical. It is harder for me mentally to write javascript for my application then for writing the css or html and it's not because the logic is harder. It is because I mentally fear that I don't know how to program because the internet keeps telling me I can't. But every time I do it it turns out that I can.

I can feel it in my body when I switch to the js file in Atom. The feeling is fear.

I don't have it for: setting up a new ubuntu server, building a responsive website, styling with css or working with Wordpress because I know this is web development.

I can't mentally figure out what to think about building apps in swift. There is a lot of logic so that is technically "real programming" but there is a lot of styling so that is technically not programming. So I guess I have a moderate fear for it.

My point is that this isn't about the fact that it is harder to write logic then html or css. This is about my own fear. And the idea that web developers can't code makes it worse.

I actually wrote something related to this on my website. https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-throu...

finishingmove• 10 years ago

This article is just common sense. In every area there are people who pursue excellence and people who are slackers. People who look hard for optimal solutions given the constraints, and people who try to sell whatever they write as "smart solutions".

Web development is very transparent and in the spotlight these days, so it's exposed to a lot of criticism. I wonder how many cases of "smart programming" do we have in C code-bases around the world...

sklogic16• 10 years ago

Just take a look at Toyota scandal. There is a same bunch of slackers in embedded, not any different from that pathetic lot that gave PHP a bad karma.

jpswade• 10 years ago

When I started out with PHP (cica 2000) it was just another scripting language to make stuff happen on web pages and it was easier to work with than perl.

In 2003, Rasmus who created PHP said: "I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way".

PHP has since been developed into a fully fledged programming language borrowing many of its traits from Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl.

Now at PHP7, having two major versions since 2000, I can say with some confidence that PHP is a "real programming" language.

sklogic16• 10 years ago

PHP became a barely passable language only after HHVM was created. Before that it only had totally pathetic implementations.

Edit: do downvoters really think the original PHP implementation was not a pile of crap?!? Amusing!

fit2rule• 10 years ago

Real programming is anything you do in order to achieve the godlike state of a user, using the computer, to do something.

Anything.

sklogic16• 10 years ago

All your web stuff is not a real programming. Not because it is "easier" or "less valuable" than, say, aerospace or automotive, but because you're doing it wrong. Among all things, the entire web stack of technologies is the most horribly overengineered one.

Most of the frightingly hard problems you're solving should have never existed in the first place. And yes, web devs, it is your fault, your collective responsibility. Web could have been nice. You screwed it.

mikegioia3• 10 years ago

Is this sarcasm or just ignorance?

YngwieMalware• 10 years ago

I'm going with ignorance

sklogic16• 10 years ago

If you do not think that all that web stack is horribly overengineered, then you know nothing about engineering at all. If you do not see dozens of ways it could have been orders of magnitude simpler without surrendering any functionality, you know nothing about engineering at all.

brightball5• 10 years ago

Did not expect to see this post making HN this morning. Thanks!

EugeneOZ• 10 years ago

Author is mixing programming for money and programming for enjoying of algorithms, optimizations and little part of science inside.

iolothebard• 10 years ago

What works is what's "real". I don't care if you're building in php, .net, ruby, or anything else. All that matters is does it work for the user.

Selling software for my own companies for almost two decades, wait, exactly two decades, I've never had a SINGLE customer ask me "what language is this programmed in".

The closest you'd get is anyone running a non standard OS (anything besides Windows).

davidspiess• 10 years ago

I had the same crisis two years ago. I was on vacation and couldn't stand the thought going back to work doing the same odd and boring CMS PHP stuff i used to code day in and day out. My girlfriend left me at the same time, so i decided to make a move. I quit the job, i thougt i was good at, and went to a company which programmed mostly in C# and F#. It was challenging, but at the same time so satisfying to be excited again. I learned about functional programming, looked beyond the horizon of my save little PHP and JS world. I never looked bad to my old me and my old job. Stay curious and if the moment comes you feel stuck, move on to something similar but yet unknown and challenging.

CM302• 10 years ago

As someone who does a lot of basic PHP development and makes various sites with WordPress, I think the key point people seem to forget in this debate is that most projects are simple by nature, at least on a technical level.

I mean sure, making a WordPress site with themes and plugins is not as complicated as coding a web app in Node.js or whatever, but the majority of business sites don't really need much in the way of complexity. Just a few pages that the client can add content to and maybe a blog on the site that might send the content to social media sites upon being posted. In those cases, why not use WordPress or another simple CMS system?

On another note, this is also kind of the reason I haven't really gotten the chance to use much in the way of the latest or fanciest technology. Because every idea I get turns out to be one that doesn't need it.

crispyambulance4• 10 years ago

Your idealism is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.

There's plenty of work for everyone. No need to call what other people do "trivial" or demean them for not "automating" something after having done it once.

FWIW, automating something can easily be a job orders of magnitude more difficult than doing the original job. It might require capabilities and resources which far exceed what is available at the organization.

Moreover, automation is a complicated continuum of solutions. If you're talking about REAL WORLD computing problems more complex than can be handled by a bash script, NO, you don't automate after solving a problem once.

sklogic16• 10 years ago

I am talking about things being repeated over and over again, far more than just a couple of times.

And the only thing organisations are lacking is sanity. The rest is trivial, proven many times. I will regard all of them as lowly and stupid, because this is what they are.

See my rant elsewhere in this thread - this stupid world is full of examples of idiots in charge.

Are you trying to convince me that the morons who designed Oyster are not morons and I should not judge them? No way. They are scum. Should not I judge the deranged NHS bosses? No way! I'd be delighted to see them beheaded, no less. Their incompetence cost human lives.

And I hate it when people are trying to play down the stupidity of others. In my book there is no sin worse than stupidity and incompetence.

Won't you deny that most of the idiots out there cannot code at all, although they call themselves "developers"?

See even the high profile apps for Android for example. Say, "BBC News". Millions had been spent on it. And this shit locks when internet connection is lost. Don't the retards who wrote it commute on a tube? Don't they know how to code asynchronous UIs?

And don't let me even start ranting about the British Gas "Hive" thingy.

The spread of the ignorance and stupidity in this world is unforgivable. And I won't ever be polite to the stupid and ignorant. They're worthless and they deserve the most harsh criticism possible.

ownagefool5• 10 years ago

So out of interests, what's so wrong with Oyster in 2016?

crispyambulance4• 10 years ago

I am talking about things being repeated over and over again, far more than just a couple of times.

Actually, no, you specifically said "once".

But that's OK, this appears to be an emotional issue for you.

dang• 10 years ago

Your idealism is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.

By taking this discussion in an uncivil direction, you provoked a flamewar, which you then jumped into and made worse ("this appears to be an emotional issue for you"). This breaks the HN guidelines. Please don't do that.

On this site, if you can't address yourself respectfully to the person you're responding to, regardless of how wrong they are, it's best to wait until you can.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11048119 and marked it off-topic.

crispyambulance4• 10 years ago

Understood. I apologize. Sometimes it is easy to get carried away.

JohnLeTigre• 10 years ago

If I remember correctly, Real Programmers use FORTRAN and Quiche Eaters use PASCAL

No such thing as “real programming” (2015)

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