Wank: to pleasure oneself
Wanker: a person who wanks
Computer programmer: a person who wanks in public.
Ergo: computer programmers are wankers.
Picture the scene: rooms full of fragrant smoke, people in multi-coloured robes, loud discordant music demonstrating the excesses of musicians playing long, self-indulgent, often discordant pieces that only the stoned, arms waving like sea anemones and heads bobbing like nodding donkeys, adopting an imaginary beat while wearing a glazed look supported by a smile that raised questions as to their mental acuity could enjoy and which millions sat pretending to appreciate while secretly and silently screaming “for Fuck’s Sake GET ON WITH IT.”
Then came Punk.
Punk rock did not add a sitar, brilliantly played but contextually ill-fitting, to an hour long piece (broken in two because someone had to get up and turn over a record, a complex job made up of a strict sequence of delicate tasks, while physically and mentally muddled).
Punk was cut-back, not laid back. It took the energy of the leather-clad founders of rock and restored it to its original purpose. And while many thought Punk was itself a horrid cacophony, in fact many of its proponents were as accomplished musicians as those playing the pretentious claptrap that was slowly choking music.
For, although ProgRock was often the work of musical genius, it was also the product of some fantastically grandiose and self-centred wankers. They played for themselves and took everyone else along for their magic carpet ride. The ornate and complex had taken over from the melodic and rhythmic. The purpose of music had been lost, just as it had been in the growth of other forms of music over time: some “classical” music and much “jazz” is equally complex and self-indulgent. There’s a culture: if you don’t like it, it’s because it’s too intellectual for you and you don’t understand it. A bloke in a bar once said that to me when he asked if I liked the Jazz band. I didn’t. I suggested we compare our certificates and even competition results. I won. He didn’t have any.
That is what programming has become. No longer is the purpose or the user important. It has become a wank in which someone decides to make something intricate and complex for his own pleasure. He thinks that a 25 minute rambling solo is better than a three minute carefully constructed thrash and that sees bum notes as part of the performance, failing to recognise the importance of clarity and accuracy and, equally importantly, economy. He’s read the articles in men’s magazines that say women want 45 minutes’ foreplay when in truth most times, most women quickly reach the point of saying “are you going to stick it in so I can go to sleep?”
And so, we, the users, find that what was once simple has become complex, each part built slightly differently and the whole band not quite fitting together. Programmers have become virtuosi soloists, but not particularly talented performers. Nor, tellingly, good band members.
They have become arrogant, creating their own languages and a seemingly infinite number of dialects that exclude anyone who is not part of their group, making users dependent upon them for what should be the simplest tasks. They run in ever tighter circles in ever denser smoke in ever smaller rooms because no one who isn’t a full time programmer can understand them. It’s not a profession, it’s a walled garden.
It’s time for a programming punk revolution: it’s time that the pretentious were knocked off their high horses and reminded who they are programming for. It’s time that programmers stopped thinking of themselves first and realised that there’s someone else involved.
It’s time their version of the computing industry finds itself on the shelf as a new generation of high-speed, purpose driven, programmers deliver satisfaction to users instead of, primarily, to themselves.
In short, it’s time programmers stopped wanking and started having sex.
Submitted by Nigel Morris-Cotterill
Nigel Morris-Cotterill’s interest in tech is as a tool. He’s built applications, worked in the design of systems and tested and written about software and kit starting in the 1980s from the point of view of the user. In real life, he is a financial crime strategist for whom simplicity and elegance of policies and procedures are paramount if they are to work as intended.
Images: CGI by Projectlxx.com
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