But in most cases programming is production and not art. That does not mean it cannot be artistic. To me, those who express the utmost need to code in a mere text editor and have the entire code base memorized demonstrate an estimation of their ego rather than intelligence.

Programming languages advance rather quickly, especially web scripting languages. They alter, add, deprecate, etc. I differ from many programmers who seem to want the utmost complexity in exchange for a philosophical programming language.

Rather, I have for years held to the belief that we programmers deal with far too much syntax. And should not. We should be programming in logic. Syntax should be simplified to just logic. A lot of times I feel as if I am being forced to do and provide more than is reasonably necessary in order to perform a task. (ie: I should never have to specify milliseconds from x date in order to create a date/time occurrence – that is something that should be handled internally and never seen by the application programmer). Instead of code becoming simpler it’s often becoming more obfuscated. How much change in scripting languages is merely “pop trendy”. (ie: For all the rave about css & stylesheet, a great many websites still utilize tables for layouting – why? because css is unreliable in many platforms and the use of tables can often provide a more uniform appearance without the hurdle of customizing code to handle every version of every browser. In other words…it’s a quicker path to a reliable result.

Recently I saw an article on Slashdot arguing that there is too much math in programming and that it should not be so. And I will agree to a point. I think we have divisions within the programming world. System programmers and application developers. For the latter, excepting those applications that inherently require complex math, there is little need for there to be much beyond PreCalc. Of course such knowledge is ALWAYS tied to what the task at hand is.

But more often than not I find so many of these issues to be more about pride than programming. “You don’t use x, or you should use x, only ignorant people use x, and so on.”

It’s very much akin to Linux. What is the number one thing holding Linux back from becoming a mainstream desktop OS? It’s not Linux…it the number of arrogant prideful users of Linux who rather than helping people get accustomed to and overcome the hurdles of Linux would prefer to use Linux as a measure of competitive intelligence.

This might have been fine to me back when I was in high school. But I’m older, more tired, I’m not concerned with proving myself to all “you” out there. I know who I am…