

The Best Programmer in the World is the One Having the Most Fun - scottcha
http://hackerhmb.tumblr.com/post/61477929414/thebestprogrammerintheworld

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digitalsushi
It's hard to constantly reinvent the universe to make it fun again. Oh, look
at us, 'young' programmers and admins, our early 30s: how many of us have been
doing this stuff for 15 years now? And to already be weary of the daily grind,
to have discovered cynicism prematurely. How do I awaken to the realm each
morning, doe-eyed and blissful to learn new secrets? This venue is beyond
familiar. I think I know the dance moves all my heart. And if there are more
to find, my heart has grown too shallow to push blood at my feet to dance. I
look in other windows, other professions, and see such ripe opportunities to
improve their process. Faulty confidence? To swap careers with another forlorn
professional, just long enough to rediscover why programming is indeed a for
the young at heart. This weird intersection of procedure and creativity, the
nexus of writer's block and chasing the bottom line, how do we keep it all
together for the decades to come?

~~~
auggierose
One of the first things I programmed when I was a kid was a parser (and
calculator) for arithmetic expressions. It was hand coded, in Quick Basic (the
interpreter version that came for free with MS DOS), and quite bad code, as I
had never before read anything about how to do it. And I had a lot of fun!

Last week (about 22 years later) I programmed a new generator for scannerless
context free parsing which takes layout into account, using my own special
variant of Earley parsing. And I had a lot of fun!

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9diov
Is there any research to back this sort of popular statement? I am very
skeptical of this kind of statement where the author makes up a romanticized
story to illustrate his point. This is very similar to the popular "do what
you love" blog post that get posted here once every few months.

The best programmer I know in person agonizes over his approaches until it
satisfies his high level of standard. He is a professional, not an amateur who
does his work for fun. Does he have fun when he works? Yes, sometimes, but not
all the time.

~~~
doug1001
so i think this aphorism is borrowed from a quote by Alex Lowe (in the
American Alpine Journal); For those not familiar with AL, he was a brilliant
alpine climber of apparently super-human endurance who died while climbing
Shishapangma (an 8,000 metr Himalayan peak in Tibet. I know very little about
the context in which AL made this statement, but his remark might have been
provoked by his impatience with the obsession to rank climbers (like baseball
pitchers or NFL running backs), given that to him climbing was a deeply
personal endeavour rather than a spectator sport.

~~~
micro_cam
I'm not sure of when it was first said but IIRC it was a response to someone
accusing him of being the best climber in the world in an interview.

Lowe by the way was a fascinating character who, in addition to being one of
the worlds top athletes, studied mathematics and would reportedly bring math
text books on expeditions to keep himself entertained.

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ChrisAntaki
At this point, I've worked with a ton of programmers. The ones who really
stand out, are the ones who enjoy their work. If that person also enjoys
coding with others, and the process of improvement, they have unlimited
potential.

~~~
chris_mahan
Imagine Senator Palpatine zapping with Mace Windu the Force lighting out of
his outstretched arms with a gleeful look, gloating "Unlimited Power!"

Oh, not like that? Sorry...

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Not at all. More like this picture of Luke & Yoda doing some peer brogramming.
[http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/838/231409-lukeskywalker...](http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/838/231409-lukeskywalkerr4.jpg)

"Write helpful comments, you must"

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mildtrepidation
The _happiest_ programmer is the one having the most fun. And in the case of
this article, the best programmer is portrayed as the one who _started out_
having the most fun.

This isn't just pedantry; I've known a lot of programmers that absolutely
loved their work but wrote code that was mediocre or worse, or wrote decent
code but couldn't structure a project to save their lives.

"I have so much fun doing this" doesn't immediately imply "I know or seek to
know all of the intricacies of this subject."

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lnanek2
The display switch is a fun hack, but even a decade ago I think there were
already programs where you could just wag your mouse over to the other screen
of a computer. It doesn't need a display switch at all, just an app on both
computers that passed the input from one to the other over the network under
certain situations. Such apps are still used frequently today where people
will bring a Macbook Air and an iPad to a hackathon and just use the iPad as a
second screen. This became a big thing when everyone had to throw out their
old PS/2 KVMs for USB ones or just use a software solution.

This is true of me too, a lot of times I have fun writing something already
done, although it is kind of a sad waste.

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tamersalama
I see programmers are mostly concerned, over any other profession, of how good
they are at what they do. How to be best. Yet - they are the least understood
or recognized for the effort. Anyone else finds it strange?

~~~
tenpoundhammer
I think this ideas comes from the lack of careers that are so openly talked
about that also have so much latitude for improvement and improvisation. Many
professions have been turned into assembly lines, button pushing, and quality
monitoring. The craftsmanship of many jobs has disappeared.

Programming is only widely open and publicized via the internet, it's natural
for people with computers to have a greater presence on the internet.

However if you talk to someone that practices a craft,like carpentry or
brewing, you will find a similar drive and passion to learn the techniques,
soft skills, and hard skills that are required to be great. It's really about
craftsmanship, not about software.

~~~
kassner
So programmers are bottle-ships builders 9 to 5? Using their hobby to make a
living. Fine by me.

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mlitwiniuk
So true. It's simple - playing aroung does open ones mind. It's that simple
and that hard. But it requires passion - no one will be able to force himself
for side project and even if he do, no lesson will be learned. I observe it
all the time across my coworkers - those, who like play around with related
technologies, are getting better all the time.

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xutopia
I know blissfully ignorant programmers and they're not the ones I want on my
team.

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coldcode
If I didn't enjoy at least some of what I did, I wouldn't still be coding
after 32 years.

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tremorchr
Coding with a smile or not coding at all...

