Bridge-Building Can Ruin Your Life

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Someone (I couldn’t find out who, if you know, contact me please) wrote an article that says Programming Can Ruin Your Life. Of course, with that title, it must go on reddit, right?

So how can programming ruin your life?

Sadly, no one ever tells you about the ways in which it will adversely affect your life. The physical effects are obvious. You’ll spend most of your time sitting, probably in an uncomfortable chair that doesn’t promote good posture. You’ll fuel yourself with food that is readily available, meaning it’s more than likely processed and full of sugar and you’ll likely choose either coffee or soda to stave off the drowsiness. A coworker once remarked, “If it doesn’t come out of a vending machine, programmers don’t eat it.”

How stupid is that? So, because programming is so brain-consuming or addictive or whatever, your hypothetical programmer won’t know how eat properly or exercise? Sorry to disappoint you here, anonymous writer, but not all coders are anti-social fat suckers who spend all night in front of the computer.

Also, even if you learned in English class that you can close an argument in an essay with anecdotal evidence, I would recommend inventing a coworker who has not undergone lobotomy next time.

The text goes on saying that “[p]rogramming changes more than your body. Programming changes the way you think.” Well, yup.

The application of programming specific processes and habits to the everyday is where peril lies. The same traits that make you a great programmer can make you an awkward, misunderstood and miserable human being.

What the fuck?

Programming presents you with a problem and allows you to eventually solve it provided you don’t quit. A solution is out there somewhere. Make enough attempts and chances are you’ll eventually prevail. Aren’t computers great? They afford a large degree of freedom in problem solving. If nothing else, you are able to make as may attempts as you please and it will happily execute each one. This instills in you a sense that failure is not final. Any obstacle can be hurdled. This is not true in the real world. While you may find second chances now and again, the wheels that turn in the big blue room are largely unforgiving. Time marches on in one direction.

Okay, I’ll have to address this from a few different directions, because it is mind-fuckingly stupid in so many dimensions.

First we have the claim that failure is not possible in programming. Hello? Does a nontrivial problem somehow go away just because I try again? No, of course it does not.

Then, what is it with the philosophical attitude? “[T]he wheels that turn in the big blue room are largely unforgiving. Time marches on in one direction.” Somehow the author seems to think he has it all figured out: life, the universe and everything. Maybe this delusion is the reason for this rambling piece of shit text.

And finally, we have the idea (again) of the coder as a trained monkey who can only deal with his surroundings in the context of a computer. That everybody who decides to create software for fun or profit suddenly loses their connection to reality. I could maybe write a thousand words just about the stupidity of that claim alone, if I wasn’t sure that no one would read it.

The text goes on, but this is the gist: Because programmers are so terribly obsessed with what they do, and because they are also idiot savants, they are compelled to apply their silly ways of solving problems in the computer to every fucking situation in their lives. They just don’t know better.

Me, I disagree. What about you?

About this entry

You’re currently reading Bridge-Building Can Ruin Your Life, one of the many eloquent and thoughtful entries on breakthesystem.org.

It was published on 09.12.07 at 7pm.
Before this article, I wrote an entry called News indeed. After this article, I wrote something called My 15 Minutes of reddit fame.
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