Programming is a Religion

[Onyx]

Choice of whether to use "Egyptian Braces", various coding styles, languages, text editors, operating systems, etc. might be an indication of a very real religion for some. I could care less as long as the damn thing works, but are you "religious" in your approach to programming computers?

 

[icehorse]

I associate religion with dogma, so no. But I have to admit to being opinionated about programming

There's a good reason to put that opening brace at the end of the line dag-nabit!
Encapsulation is good for you! Tight coupling is evil! Global variables are blasphemous!

 

[Brickjectivity]

Its more like a cult. "Its easy!" they say. "Everybody should know how to program!" With such sweet words the cultists lure young vulnerable people. Then comes the harvest of the ingathering, when the fresh meat finds out that one programming language is insufficient. "Any programming monkey knows at least nine programming languages plus LLVM! Remember that our job as programmers is to please the computer, and the computer is never pleased!"

 

[sun rise]

And there is hidden scripture frozen in time from the dark ages but still with value. For example with many more here: Glossary

wave a dead chicken: v.

To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. “I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug.” Compare voodoo programming, rain dance; see also casting the runes.
casting the runes: n.
What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in Some AI Koans (in Appendix A).

A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service machines which the field circus had given up on. Since he knew the design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then tell them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would start working again immediately upon the replacement.

 

[arthra]

Choice of whether to use "Egyptian Braces", various coding styles, languages, text editors, operating systems, etc. might be an indication of a very real religion for some. I could care less as long as the damn thing works, but are you "religious" in your approach to programming computers?

I can see some self programming in religion... that is we have obligatory prayers we recite daily and certain practices. I think fasting is a kind of self programming. Of course the heart for me is where my faith resides and the love that binds me and my family and community together. We are programmed every day by the exposure to various media... so it is well for us to have alternate programs as well.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Its more like a cult. "Its easy!" they say. "Everybody should know how to program!" With such sweet words the cultists lure young vulnerable people. Then comes the harvest of the ingathering, when the fresh meat finds out that one programming language is insufficient. "Any programming monkey knows at least nine programming languages plus LLVM! Remember that our job as programmers is to please the computer, and the computer is never pleased!"

Funny
I always find the opposite. They seem moderately impressed by what my hack programming has achieved, until they realise it was a non-techie cobbling it together.

Then they're all 'ooooh, your variables have an inconsistent naming convention'.

 

[sun rise]

Funny
I always find the opposite. They seem moderately impressed by what my hack programming has achieved, until they realise it was a non-techie cobbling it together.

Then they're all 'ooooh, your variables have an inconsistent naming convention'.

Even worse is the wrong naming convention. In decades past I participated in a lot of arm waving about the one true and universal standard for variables (and indentation, of course).

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Funny
I always find the opposite. They seem moderately impressed by what my hack programming has achieved, until they realise it was a non-techie cobbling it together.

Then they're all 'ooooh, your variables have an inconsistent naming convention'.

I find that the most anal programmers are capable of writing highly-efficient, organized, and clever pieces of code that never meet the requirements of the what the user actually needs.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I find that the most anal programmers are capable of writing highly-efficient, organized, and clever pieces of code that never meet the requirements of the what the user actually needs.

*Laughs*
Lucky for me, or I'd be less valuable in the industry I work in.
It's kinda funny watching them explain to a user why the user is wrong about the users business requirements, and us coding convention s as the argument rather than ROI or similar.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

*Laughs*
Lucky for me, or I'd be less valuable in the industry I work in.
It's kinda funny watching them explain to a user why the user is wrong about the users business requirements, and us coding convention s as the argument rather than ROI or similar.

Me too. I cobble together a mishmash of rough, inefficient code, borrowed snippets, and extraneous bits without any consistent formatting or comments - and users think I'm a genius because I do it fast, and it does what they need.

 

[Onyx]

This is my religion:

2 space indents.
No Egyptian braces, they should line up.
CamelCase for classes and namespaces.
mixedCase for methods.
lower_case for variables.
UPPER_CASE for macros.

And I'm right!