Programmer's Sexiness Quest

October 15, 2019

Let’s be guided, we are not getting naughty here.

Nevertheless, a programmer is a human, he has his feelings and emotions which is interesting. The direction he puts these uniquely human traits makes him more interesting - towards the code and software, of course.

I’ve been through a variety of programming languages, which always turned to be that the deeper I dive into a language, the more “aha” moment I get. I always feel like I have gotten what I wanted and have to look no further to attract the priceless attention of my fellows.

I saw unique features, improvements in another, etc. scattered all around these languages. Each time that I had noticed a better way of doing things other than that of a previous language, I would give myself the accomplishment smile thinking that I found what I wanted my quest for a sexy language was over, unlucky for me, it has been a repeating pattern.

Take a glance look at the below elixir snippet, where returned values from function calls can be pipped instead of being wrapped in parentheses or pass down as parameters.

The first time that I saw that piece of feature, I felt a big grin inside of my small intestine, a sweet sensation of coolness, that is what all programmers love to have aside from the actual “sexiness” inborn with them.

What I believe many other programmers like me failed to realize is a fact that these languages are tools, same with libraries and frameworks. Looking through the eye of a Mechanical Engineer, I understand that a Pipe Wrench even though it looks like, but can not work as an Adjustable Spanner, though they can be adapted in place of each other in some cases.

PHP/Laravel, NodeJS/Express, Java/Spring, Python/Django, etc. should not be and can never be a debate of which is more beautiful and sexy, it is just baseless. Same way as asking Beyonce and Rihanna who’s more beautiful? Really?

I understand the point that a programmer’s delight is to look more sophisticated than his peers in terms of tooling and machine. But a question is, does this really worth the fight? Do we have to keep asking who has more fan base, use case, GitHub stars, recently used and likes and not which actually gets these kinds of tasks done and which pays more?

All the tools that exist for us as a programmer have tradeoffs. Inventors of these tools tried to solve one major problem with them, and we could notice that these tools have thrived in their domain and would continue to thrive as long as there is no better replacement for it.

C might be outdated, Fortran might be dead, Cobol could be seen resting in Valhalla, does that mean that people have forgotten about them? Does that mean the works done with them too are dead? Do we have to rewrite all the whole of an application just because of a new trendy tool?

No, we do not and we should not. To those that find those old fashioned languages interesting, let them have their time and space to prove their beauty. Even transitioning from an old language to a new one requires the knowledge of both languages, and does not translate to that old language being dead.

Until we start thinking of programming as a business and a means to an end, which actually takes out the sexy thoughts of a macho man, the quest of being that sexy programmer will always remain.

I think we all should start seeking for what actually brings in the bags and not the bugs. We can wander around these languages and expand our horizons. They should not be as a result of seeking to be more fashionable that would translate to the programmers looking sexier. It should be about the bank account, and not more macho.