Surgery is mostly repetitive work with some limited variation. Surgeons can practice what they do until most elements can be done by rote. In contrast, many programming tasks are novel, and the boundaries are constantly being pushed forward. Most things that are repetitive and can be done by rote will be automated by any decent programmer. This is not to justify our mistakes, but there are not many areas where the scope of tasks is as broad and constantly changing as it is in IT.
Some complexity comes from poorly designed and interacting libraries, but they are only so prevalent because of the complexity of the tasks that we have to solve. I have been programming since the 1980s and when I look back at what I used to do it was laughably simpler that what we routinely do today. Sure the lack of tools made it much harder then, but the complexity of our systems was so much less. For an example of this look at the number of lines of code in Linux - Version 0.01 (in 1991) had 10,239 lines of code, version 1.0 (in 1994) had 176,250, by 2.6 (2003) it had 5.9m - by 2015 it has grown to over 19.5m. We are constantly extending our view of what an operating system should be able to do, and the same is true of most things that we write today.
Well I don't speak much French, and while I did study Latin 20 years ago, it is pretty rusty.
Before I posted I checked my micrographically reduced full-text OED for the etymology of these words. Now the abbreviations are sometimes a little difficult to decode so I'll quote them in full.
"[a. Fr. amateur ad. L. amator-em, n. of agent f. ama-re to love.]"
[It. dilettante 'a lover of music or painting', f. dilettare:-L:delectare to delight. So mod.F. dilettante]
I'm willing to accept that I read these wrong but it doesn't really affect my conclusions. It sounds like you know what you're talking about better than I do - what do I know, I'm just an amateur.
According to my Oxford dictionary, the original meaning of amateur was "One who loves or is fond of" - from the French amare (to love). I like this definition - I think that an intrinsic love for the subject is what distinguishes an amateur from a professional. An amateur could be paid, but would keep working even if they are not.
A similar word, usually used in a derogative way is dilettante - "A lover of the fine arts; originally one who cultivates them for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional... later applied... to one who interests himself in an art or science merely as a pastime and without serious aim or study." (OED)
It is based on the French word dilettare - to delight.
Compare this with the word Professional which my OED tells me is based on the word Profession - "The declaration, promise or vow made by one entering a religious order; hence the action of entering such an order; the fact of being professed in a religious order."
So we have two pictures - the professional who has made a serious, solid, institutional commitment; and the amateur/dilettante who is in it purely for the love and delight. It is not surpising that the professionals look down on the amateurs and mistrust their pleasure. It is also not surprising that the history of science and technology is full of breakthroughs made by amateurs.
I agree with the premise of the article - as we become richer and live longer lives more and more of us are able to spend time indulging our love and delight and make significant contributions as amateurs.
Slashdot Mirror
Surgery is mostly repetitive work with some limited variation. Surgeons can practice what they do until most elements can be done by rote. In contrast, many programming tasks are novel, and the boundaries are constantly being pushed forward. Most things that are repetitive and can be done by rote will be automated by any decent programmer. This is not to justify our mistakes, but there are not many areas where the scope of tasks is as broad and constantly changing as it is in IT.
Some complexity comes from poorly designed and interacting libraries, but they are only so prevalent because of the complexity of the tasks that we have to solve. I have been programming since the 1980s and when I look back at what I used to do it was laughably simpler that what we routinely do today. Sure the lack of tools made it much harder then, but the complexity of our systems was so much less. For an example of this look at the number of lines of code in Linux - Version 0.01 (in 1991) had 10,239 lines of code, version 1.0 (in 1994) had 176,250, by 2.6 (2003) it had 5.9m - by 2015 it has grown to over 19.5m. We are constantly extending our view of what an operating system should be able to do, and the same is true of most things that we write today.
Well I don't speak much French, and while I did study Latin 20 years ago, it is pretty rusty.
Before I posted I checked my micrographically reduced full-text OED for the etymology of these words. Now the abbreviations are sometimes a little difficult to decode so I'll quote them in full.
"[a. Fr. amateur ad. L. amator-em, n. of agent f. ama-re to love.]"
[It. dilettante 'a lover of music or painting', f. dilettare:-L:delectare to delight. So mod.F. dilettante]
I'm willing to accept that I read these wrong but it doesn't really affect my conclusions. It sounds like you know what you're talking about better than I do - what do I know, I'm just an amateur.
According to my Oxford dictionary, the original meaning of amateur was "One who loves or is fond of" - from the French amare (to love). I like this definition - I think that an intrinsic love for the subject is what distinguishes an amateur from a professional. An amateur could be paid, but would keep working even if they are not.
A similar word, usually used in a derogative way is dilettante - "A lover of the fine arts; originally one who cultivates them for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional ... later applied ... to one who interests himself in an art or science merely as a pastime and without serious aim or study." (OED)
It is based on the French word dilettare - to delight.
Compare this with the word Professional which my OED tells me is based on the word Profession - "The declaration, promise or vow made by one entering a religious order; hence the action of entering such an order; the fact of being professed in a religious order."
So we have two pictures - the professional who has made a serious, solid, institutional commitment; and the amateur/dilettante who is in it purely for the love and delight. It is not surpising that the professionals look down on the amateurs and mistrust their pleasure. It is also not surprising that the history of science and technology is full of breakthroughs made by amateurs.
I agree with the premise of the article - as we become richer and live longer lives more and more of us are able to spend time indulging our love and delight and make significant contributions as amateurs.