Programming Is Something Else

ProgrammingIsSomethingElse entirely. Indeed, just about no other human endeavor matches well with programming.

Programming is not manufacturing. There are no materials. There is no physical labor. It takes (virtually) no time to go from specification (source) to product (binary).

Programming is not engineering. I'm not an engineer, and I've done over 20 years of programming. All that programming did not make me an engineer. Sure, I can solve problems and learn languages, talk with clients and keep customers, but I never considered the monetary cost of a switch statement versus that of a block of if statements.

Programming is not music, art, or poetry. That's all I have to say on that one.

Programming is not architecture. Again, 20 years of programming experience has taught me nothing about building codes, beam support capabilities, and so forth. I know architects personally who have watched me work and claimed a total lack of empathy.

Programming is not math. There are two points to math: totalling up your grocery bill, and finding out absolutely new ways to total up the grocery bill of the whole galaxy. Programming is clearly neither.

(IanKjos)

Is programming knitting? Conversely, is knitting programming? (Knit one, Perl one...)