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Ask Slashdot: How Can Programmers Explain Their Work To Non-Programmers?
Slashdot reader Grady Martin writes:
I disrespect people who describe their work in highfalutin terms... However, describing my own work as "programming solutions to problems" is little more than codifying what just about anyone can perceive through intuition. Case in point: Home for the holidays, I was asked about recent accomplishments and attempted to explain the process of producing compact visualizations of branched undo/redo histories.
Responses ranged from, "Well, duh," to, "I can already do that in Word"...
It's the "duh" that I want to address, because of course an elegant solution seem obvious after the fact: Such is the nature of elegance itself. Does anyone have advice on making elegance sound impressive?
An anonymous Slashdot reader left this suggestion for explaining your work to non-programmers. "Don't. I get sick when I hear the bullshit artists spew crap out of their mouth when they have no idea wtf they're talking about. Especially managers..."
But how about the rest of you? How can programmers explain their work to non-programmers?
Responses ranged from, "Well, duh," to, "I can already do that in Word"...
It's the "duh" that I want to address, because of course an elegant solution seem obvious after the fact: Such is the nature of elegance itself. Does anyone have advice on making elegance sound impressive?
An anonymous Slashdot reader left this suggestion for explaining your work to non-programmers. "Don't. I get sick when I hear the bullshit artists spew crap out of their mouth when they have no idea wtf they're talking about. Especially managers..."
But how about the rest of you? How can programmers explain their work to non-programmers?
Learn the art of self-deprecation and explain your job badly instead.
Examples:
I'm a digital plumber = Network Admin
I'm a janitor/groundskeeper in an imaginary world, I clean up other people's messes and fix crap they break = Sys Admin>
Etc...
[perl...] If they can understand that, they cannot understand anything.
dude. i am a software libre advocate and developer of 25 years experience. i've worked with million-line codebases for two decades. i have done reverse-engineering of ARM and x86 instructions. i've programmed PICs, Z80 and 68000 processors in assembler. i'm going to be working on designing and bringing to market a libre RISC-V SoC... and *I* do not want you to explain perl to me.
Porn.. it's why you have it 24/7.
In the case of porn especially, it's "24x7", not "24/7". Try those two formulas in excel, you'll see.
lucm, indeed.
Fire up a computer
Click on a program, or a game
Then, turn to that non-programmer and say "All these happen because of programmers"
They will still have gobs of clueless questions that will waste even more of your time and leave them still without a clue.
This problem was addressed many years ago. It's not in English (or German, really) but the meaning still comes through.
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FUR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN!
ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN.
IST NICHT FUR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HANDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
HTH
HAND :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.