Coding is Writing // 18-11-19

There was a recent discussion on C.S about good coding and the bad habit of lazy coders to include big libraries instead of coding small elements by themselves, c.f the leftpad incident. (Of course it's not a discussion only held on C.S...)

This had me thinking a bit more (I'm also one of those people prone to getting ideas while taking a relaxing shower, so blame this post to warm water, if you like!) about writing and coding.

Whenever I've finished some small coding project (or at least got it out of beta state), I have that feeling of "coding is done, now get back to real writing and do lots of posts or even a book chapter!" But it never works out, because at most a day later I remember all the other projects still pending. And so I'll never become a Real Writer (TM)! sob

Well, no. Coding is Writing as well, and IMHO, it's not worth less if it is done with similar good intentions! What do I mean by that? Good coders:

• do it for themselves, and if they get some money from it, that's nice, but not the primary motivation;
• like to be proud of their code and want others to like reading it;
• prefer their code to help and inspire others, and are fine with other people making use of it;
• don't want to explain it a lot, and they rather try to write in a way that everything is clear upfront;
• want their code to depend on other code as little as reasonable;
• hope their code will live longer than just until next week.

And in my book, that's similarly true for good writers.

Therefore I have decided to be fine with me "just writing code" and not really much of "real litterature", because although the audience is different, the final aim and motivation is the same, in my opinion.

To all coders every now and then reinventing the wheel — even if just for having their own wheels!

.:.