Real Programmers

Languages, culture & side projects don’t make real

I long for the days of real programmers. Not the sorry excuses for programmers we have nowadays that need things like IDE’s, GUI’s, and API’s, but programmers that knew how to code like true geeks wrangling 1’s and 0’s or living in vi and Emacs. They certainly did not write in so-called interpreted languages like JavaScript, Ruby, or Python. No way! Real programmers compile code that they write in real languages like C++, Java, and Haskell.

These avocado toast eating, cold brew coffee drinking wannabe hackers are nothing but a bunch of script kiddies with standing desks and natural light offices. How dare they impugn the very tenets of our sacred industry! And to think these mere code newbies have to rely on sites like Stack Overflow, a site for amateurs sharing half-baked “answers”, says all you need to know about programming these days!

Several weeks ago, developer Twitter exploded in indignation at the demotion of front-end engineering. Tobi Lutke, founder and CEO of Shopify, got the debate sparked with his comment:

“100% there should be no such thing as a front end developer outside of super junior contexts. All developers need to think across all the layers that they build on to be effective.”