Why Non-Coders Shouldn't Write Code

jfruh writes "Software firm FreeCause made a bit of a splash with a policy that requires all its employees — including marketers, finance, etc. — to write JavaScript code. And not just 'code to learn basics of what JavaScript can do,' but 'write code that will be used in production.' Phil Johnson, a tech writer and editor who himself once coded for a living, thinks this is nuts, a recipe for miserable workers and substandard code."

Comments

Marketing guy's function

[crazyjj]

function MarketingFunction(originalText)
{
var revisedText = new String(originalText + ", which will help build synergy and increase marketshare.");
return revisedText;
}

Re:Marketing guy's function

[olsmeister]

Or just use the Corporate BS Generator.
Or, alternatively, here.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[Scott Swezey]

The other side of the coin... why non marketing guys shouldn't write marketing materials:

function MarketingFunction(originalText)
{
var revisedText = new String(originalText + ", which will help build synergy and increase marketshare.");
return revisedText;
}

Re:Marketing guy's function

[RenderSeven]

Hardly a fair comparison. No one in sales/marketing/management could pass a Turing test to begin with.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[Githaron]

would add more exclamation marks, but Slashdot won't let me

Make it recursive.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[CanHasDIY]

do you think the marketing exec could pass the Turing test?

Well, perhaps, if not for the satanic ritual that's part of graduating from marketing school, during which the individual's soul and humanity are removed and replaced with tapioca pudding.

Before you ask, it's obviously because tapioca is the most evil of all puddings.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[SomeJoel]

What if your targeted market is IT professionals?

Then you have a failed business model since IT professionals, as a rule, have no budget.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[theshowmecanuck]

Sometimes (OK often) I think it is one of the reasons that companies think young guys are better programmers. Because too many managers want to believe the young programmers who do this. Yep might as well get rid of the older guys who say it'll take a month when this kid can do it in a week. And if the kid does it in a week it is shit, but everyone is so excited the feature is done that they refuse to notice it really sucks for a few weeks.. And then we get people writing papers about what is wrong with the software industry and blah blah blah. Rose coloured glasses on almost every manager sinks both projects and reasonable programmers.

Re:Marketing guy's function

[cowdung]

Or just use the Corporate BS Generator.
Or, alternatively, here.

I prefer this site for my Corporate BS. Thanks.

Appreciation Exercise

[nurb432]

It will at least give the non coders an appreciation of what is being done.

Now, they need to take the coders and make them do sales for a day.. finance go clean trash for an afternoon.. .etc etc.

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[t4ng*]

Oh, oh... Executive Officers clean up overflowing toilets. Not so they get an appreciation of what is being done, but for the general entertainment of the rest of us!

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[Chemisor]

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.
        - Vladimir Lenin

In the early days of the Soviet Union it was a very popular idea that there should be no specialization in work. No man should have to do the same thing over and over every day of his life. Jobs should be changed regularly to keep the worker interested and motivated.

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[CanHasDIY]

At the same you complain that Marketing people look down on you. But your job is important right? You're better then janitor right?

Huh? I used to be a janitor, fella, and I can tell you, the people who spend their careers cleaning up your shit so you don't have to are some pretty fucking awesome people.

Here's a word of advice - your pay scale does not, in any way, reflect what kind of person you are. One look into any boardroom in this nation is all one needs to know that most of the people who take home the lion's share are complete, abject pieces of shit. Hell, nevermind looking at them, just look at how much they pay themselves to do virtually nothing, compared to how much they pay the people who actually make their money for them.

You want marketing people to respect you, but you don't respect them, or people that make your work comfrtable.

I couldn't give a shit less what 'marketing people' or anyone else thinks of me, Chief. Spending your entire life trying to live up to other people's expectations of you is no way to live.

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[theshowmecanuck]

About 20 years ago I worked at a chemical company. Almost all the junior engineers hired had to work out in production facilities for six months to a year, disigning and implementing the occasional needed improvement they discover. After that they were allowed to become office based engineers if they wanted, or stay in operations but move to real management. It worked very well.

One time we had an electrical engineer who was trained to program Distributed Control Systems, and somehow he was never required to work in a production facility before that time. He built some attrocious logic into the system making it a pain to manage the smelter I was at. Things that should have been grouped for safety (i.e. you adjust a control, but the reading you needed to watch was on another screen) or just good functionality so the operators could focus on the situation in the plant and not switching screens all the time.

When we complained he told us we were whiners and not capable. Since a few of us were actually closer to the operations manager in terms of grade, we had him forced to use his own software in production on a few weeks of midnight shifts. There was a noticable improvement in functionality before the 3 weeks were up. And even more in the months that followed. It is often very good to forcefully put people in someone else's shoes, since they will often say it, but not do it on their own (even metaphorically).

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have hated to get heart surgery from one of their doctors.

Re:Appreciation Exercise

[Tom]

It will at least give the non coders an appreciation of what is being done.

No, it won't. A simple javascript program is not representative of a complex system design, and it will, on the contrary, make people think that this new MIS they are requesting from the software development department can't be all that much more complex than a bit of jquery.

I see nothing wrong with this

[Sparticus789]

While they are at it, perhaps their accounting department should replace the plumbing in their office building, the secretaries should swap the engine in the CEO's car, and let's have the janitors install a new security system. What could possibly go wrong?

Everyone needs to start somewhere

[davidwr]

We were all non-coders once.

Saying non-coders shouldn't write code is like saying non-writers shouldn't write.

How about: Don't expect consistently professional-quality code from inexperienced coders.

Re:Everyone needs to start somewhere

[MrEricSir]

We were all non-coders once.

And did you learn to code because you wanted to, or because your company required it?

Re:Everyone needs to start somewhere

[mykepredko]

Back in the '80s, IBM Canada gave a number of employees the chance to learn how to write code after being told that they didn't have any other skills that the company required. If you wanted to stay employed by IBM, you had to take a two year course which was actually quite substantial (covering assembly language, PL/1 (which was the language of choice at IBM back then), databases, and the usual IBM system stuff like JCL) and was administered by Ryerson (which was a polytechnic, not a University then).

A surprising number of people graduated the course - I seem to remember that it was 80% or more - and went on a new career path coding in the Toronto Lab.

So learning to program because your employer requires it is not necessarily a bad thing for both the company and the employee.

myke

Wrong way to do it

[gman003]

There's nothing wrong with making all your employees learn how to code, if you're in the coding business. That can help the non-coding guys realize the limitations of code, and let them write quick, dirty code themselves to test something. And if they have a knack for it, maybe they can serve as a coder as well as their old position (assuming your corporate structure is flexible enough for this).

But demanding everyone be putting code into production is wrong. Would you demand all your employees learn graphic design and have them all create graphics to be used in production? Would you demand all your employees study law and write contracts?

No, because that's stupid.

Re:Wrong way to do it

[Hatta]

Everyone should know enough about coding to ask smart questions of the actual coder. If you say something like "if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?", you don't know enough code. If you've never touched a line of code, you're not going to be able to adequately describe your needs to your coder. You may be asking for the impossible and not even know it.

CS101

[Larry_Dillon]

In a tech company, it makes sense to have everyone take something along the lines of CS101. Specifically JavaScript? I don't think it matters but it helps give everyone a sense of how computers really work and what they can and cannot do.

Re:CS101

[radtea]

In a tech company, it makes sense to have everyone take something along the lines of CS101.

And in a legal practice or doctor's office it makes sense for everyone to have a bit of legal or medical education, which for the most part people do.

But only a gibbering idiot would think that in any way supports the statement, "Everyone should learn to draft contracts" or "Everyone should learn to diagnose and treat diseases" simply because they work in legal or medical environments.

Re:A recipie

[hawguy]

a recipie for miserable workers and substandard code.

Which is why non-spellers shouldn't spell. Or something

No, that's spelled correctly - it's recipie, shorthand for a recipe for a delicious pie. Which fits perfectly since miserable workers can't make a delicious pie, but if they had a delicious pie they wouldn't be so miserable.

Geekcentric Nonsense

[fm6]

Back in the 60s Robert Townsend was brought in to turn around a dying Avis Rent-a-Car. He decreed that everybody spend some time working a rental counter so they would understand the activity that was at the core of the business. He was very amused by the experience of his chief programmer, who fled in panic upon seeing his first customer!

That was appreciation. This is geekcentric nonsense. The CEO doesn't just want everybody to better understand the coding, he actually thinks everybody can contribute to the codebase in an ongoing fashion. This is the classic geek fallacy of "everybody's brain works just like mine."

Re:Geekcentric Nonsense

[theshowmecanuck]

In the late 90s I was at a software company that created circulation system software for the newspaper industry. We had a good number of system testers (pretty much all of them) who had never worked at a newspaper before. As one of the senior leads, on every project I worked on I made sure that a system tester went on site with me to sit with the various departments and help them understand/learn the new system (as opposed to just classroom teaching). This was a 'bonus' for the customer.

My bosses were leery of not getting money for this extra training. But when they realized that the system test people improved by orders of magnitude because they actually understood implicitly what the features were for they started sending coders on site as well (to program in situ on projects). The quality of our system improved immensely, much quicker than otherwise would have happened.

vanity

[spongman]

this isn't about altruistically teaching others a valuable skill. it's about vain programmers trying to show their non-programmer colleagues how hard it is to code in order to get more respect. how much more condescending can you get? different people have aptitudes for different skills. go teach some dis-interested people how to do the rubic's cube, or something.

Scott Adams did.

[Medievalist]

He didn't just spout computer-generated buzzwords on the phone, though, he actually put on a fake mustache and physically attended a meeting - spouting total drivel. Nobody noticed until he started drawing Dilbert cartoons on the blackboard!

http://www.tealdragon.net/humor/articles/dil-hoax.htm