Why is programming fun?
A question I am asked most often, is why is it that I am willing to spend hours behind a computer with an advanced text editor and few reference books as my companions? Is the pay really that good? It rarely is. Are the projects I am being given at work so unique and wonderful, that it is worth the effort? Almost never. Is the opposite sex so fascinated by your profession? Never as long as their YouTube works (and showing how to embed a video earns you just a short (but excited) “Yay!” at best).
Not to delve further into it, I recently stumbled upon a perfect description, from a book “The Mythical Man-Month” (ISBN: 0-201-83595-9), written by Fred Books that hits the nail right in the head just as well today, as it did thirty years ago, when it was published. This is a highly recommended read to any practitioner of this ‘magic’, but for all you commoners out there, here is the perfect explanation of why – indeed – is programming fun:
Why is programming fun? What delights may its practioner expect as his reward?
First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God’s delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.
Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child’s first clay pencil holder “for Daddy’s office.”
Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.
Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.
Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Yet the program construct, unlike the poet’s words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separately from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.
Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.
