Ballad of a Duck

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Revision as of 07:02, 15 October 2011

Why program?

Why do we bother to write computer programs at all? Surely there must be a reason to undertake such a task. In fact, I believe there to be several.

First and weakest of these I think is our desire to simplify a task. Programming can greatly alleviate the tedium of simple, repetitive processes. I can confidently say I think this is the reason about 99% of computer programs have been written, but also that it's not a particularly strong reason why people have done so and particularly not why they continue to do so.

Existing tools do such a good (or at last competent) job of this that there is little continuing reason to program such tools from the ground up. In fact, many programming tasks amount to just slightly modifying these existing solutions.

Learning a programming language and computer system well enough to deliver a competent automation tool and then the task of actually doing it are not simple or easy. They require years of study, and any serious endeavor likely entails years of fine-tuning. A great deal of tedium can be justified in place of this expenditure of effort.

No, we cannot reasonably say that people go into computer programming just to make their lives easier. That job has been accomplished, and even had it not, the personal payoff is very rarely worth it.

However, we are creatures of pride, and we frequently see opportunities to improve on or best the work of others, especially when presented with a solution that is at best competent. Now, of course we may never succeed at doing so, but our belief that we can keeps us trying.

One need only look at the proliferation of "standards" to see this in action. How many instant messaging protocols does the world need, really? And yet, people keep striving to better the existing stalwarts. This is a good thing: it keeps the world of computers fresh and interesting and (generally speaking) continually improving.

Pride is a good reason to program, but also a dangerous one. A prideful programmer can become convinced that his or her creations are superior regardless of their objective merit.

Of course, it's possible to offset this hazard by filling an unmet need. This is an increasingly rare, but powerful motivation. Imagine the drive to create a complete cross-platform office suite for open source computing platforms. Those programmers had the pride to say they could do it, and nothing to compare against to demotivate them.

But the most important reason we write computer programs is the simplest, and one that cannot easily be discouraged by the body of existing work, or even a lack of overwhelming pride in ourselves. Quite simply, we write computer programs to find out if we can. We write more to find out how far we can go.

This is why I began programming years ago. I'm not sure I've yet found a limit. What will yours be? I hope you'll never find out, but if you want to push yourself, keep reading.