
The saying, “You are not your code” is offensive - ericbarnes
https://ericlbarnes.com/2018/01/19/you-are-not-your-code-is-offensive/
======
qubex
In Italian we have a saying that roughly translates as “To know an artist,
study his art”.

One of the things that annoys me most (and I'm not a professional programmer,
and I'm definitely not ‘hip’ as I'm out of the software industry and about as
far from the geographical epicentre of the software industry as can be), is
the ever-present Hacker News (and elsewhere) commentary to the effect that
“nice, but I wouldn't have used $LANG to build this project”, totally ignoring
the fact that the developer in question actually got his act together and
started working (for free, for everybody) with the tools he knows and prefers
for the task.

------
Eridrus
I have usually held this saying in the context of code reviews, and in that
context I think it's correct, in a work context you should accept criticism
and work to improve what you have done.

Open Source is another matter, but in general, just because you did something
doesn't make it useful, and above all most software is about making something
useful.

------
taylodl
Emphatically disagree. We're not creating art, we're creating solutions. Nor
are we creating those solutions in a vacuum, we're actually satisfying several
constraints: delivery dates, features, cost of maintenance, cost of
enhancements, the number of people we have available for each of those
activities, and so forth. It's plain to see there's no such thing as "perfect
code" except in the most trivial of circumstances. Understanding these
constraints and how they impact your architecture, design and actual code is
all part of becoming a master programmer.

~~~
OtterCoder
I disagree. Programming, however we try to deceive ourselves, is not
engineering. Too many things in our craft are unknown, untested, and a matter
of instinct and aesthetic. We are blacksmiths, carpenters, craftsmen, blending
knowledge and art to produce tools and furniture for the use of others.

Sometimes the artistry is only visible in the fit and workings of the inner
cogs, but it is there, and it is, in an infinite space of equivalent programs,
an emotional, unobjective stab, a crude sketch, at some platonic truth that
will always be outside of our reach.

