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rentzsch.com: Programmers Don’t Like to Code

From rentzsch.com: Pro­gram­mers Dont Like to Code:

Pro­gram­mers don’t like cod­ing, they like prob­lem solv­ing.

As a Com­put­er Sci­ence major, I deal with this all the time. Peo­ple ask about CS, about what we do, and it’s hard to answer. I think this gives me a good angle: “We solve prob­lems, and we use com­put­ers to do that.” It relates close­ly to “What is CS?” CS is using com­put­ers as a tool, and much like a car­pen­ter uses a claw ham­mer or crow­bar or nail gun depend­ing on the task at hand, we use Java or C++ or PHP as it’s best suit­ed to the prob­lem at hand.

We don’t like cod­ing. I don’t. What I enjoy is the prob­lem solv­ing, the decom­po­si­tion of some big, over­ar­ch­ing, dif­fi­cult to under­stand prob­lem set into tiny, man­age­able pack­ets of prob­lems and solu­tions. Under­stand­ing the whole pic­ture, see­ing how each part makes life eas­i­er or hard­er, it’s an expe­ri­ence that I love, that I’m good at.