What being a programmer is like

[andrewducker]

The basic one I like to use when describing programming in general is that programs are kind of like player pianos (self-playing pianos).

Someone comes to the programmer and says "Hey, I want a piano that plays a song that sounds like this" and the programmer goes and gets the paper that the player pianos use and he starts punching holes in it.

When he wants to hear how it sounds, he has to play it through his piano a few times. If he's done it a bunch, he probably can get a lot of it done without listening to it once.

Then when he's done programming the song and it sounds exactly like what the user described, he takes it back to the user and the user says he actually wanted a hamburger, not a player piano song.

From this discussion of how to explain programming to non-techies.

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I have to send that quote to the boss! :)

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when I used to do web design work back in '99. Typically the first meeting would go-
Client: I'd like a web site, please!
Design Team: Certainly! What would you like it to do?
Client:?
DT: Support email orders? Act as first point on contact on the Web for new customers? Promote your business with contact details so people can just phone/fax like they do now?
Client:... I'd like a web site, please!
DT: *muttering* Oh great. Another one. Get Fluke to bang out HomePage No.3. He's got the code on a floppy somewhere.

And that, kids, is how The Dot Com Crash happened. Roughly.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

I count myself very lucky that our 'users' are, in fact, programmers.

[soon_lee]

Related is The vendor-client relationship - in real world situations