“Real” Coding Is an Elitist Myth

Ironic and kind of sad.

It’s nice that normals can get things done, yet there has always been the likes of FileMaker Pro and Visual Basic.

Being cute about the author’s wife’s soft core development is one thing, saying ‘“Real” coding is an elitist myth’” is a bit grotesque.

I’ve developed access control, configuration management, and asynchronous transaction systems. Things no-code still does not quite fulfill.

It’s awesome that more off the shelf open source tools do most of these things for you, where normals can write binding logic or fill in boilerplate wireframes, getting real work done.

Saying elite coding is a myth defecates on the entire development culture that has brought us here!

When I started coding (don’t want to date myself) everyone was talking about klocs to which I, an early Perl coder at the time would sneer that the new leet coder wrote as little as possible to solve the problem.

My generation was raised in the shadow of stories of RMS coding until he couldn’t use his hands… and then had someone else type for him. And everyone was using his code!

“Real” coders (before code commoditization) were often awake for days straight, fueled by over-caffeination grinding out some new platform change.

Elitist “real” coding is really real, that just isn’t what this guy’s wife needs. Try this perspective on a critical embedded platform, time for her and her family will be a myth!

"Real coding" or "real coder" is a term I've only ever seen self-inflicted; people worried that what they are doing doesn't rate, isn't the real deal.

There's almost always good people on hand to dissuade them of their de-rating themselves. I see a lot of community support for defeating this particular "i'm not good enough" version of impostor syndrome.

If anything, it's hard to give the person space to admit, yeah, you do have a lot of things to learn still: this is the reciprocal to "always accept compliments" - the psychologist's "respect people's defenses". Which is a more complex line that we actually should be challenging, but with grace & permission & support.

Sure, but there's a qualitative difference between some wanker coming along and crapping out a solution in PHP, and professional programming. Just like the difference between a home improvement weekend warrior slapping a mud room on the back of his house without a permit and the This Old House folks adding a sun room.

I'm not sure how to define that distinction though. People should definitely be free to do what they want. That's why I use and advocate for open source software.

No, that's not "real programming." It's "real value," but not "real programming."