Programming Is

People often tell each other, programming is art, programming is engineering and what not. But when you are tired and feeling utterly anti-mystical, Programming Is

Type some keys, press some buttons, until the systems types stuff back at you, and you claim it is what you want.

Down with abstractions, up with sweat and tears :-). -- AamodSane

---

I think the above actually describes the average user experience, rather than programming.

I'd restate it as

Type out the steps you think you want the computer to perform, run them, rewrite the steps to be what you really meant, run them again, and keep on running, rewriting, and swearing until the system finally does what you thought you told it to do in the first place.

-- KrisJohnson

---

ProgrammingIs the process of converting caffeine into error messages.

---

See ProgrammingIsMath, ProgrammingIsInTheMind, ProgrammingIsSomethingElse