We know that Lifehacker’s readership is pretty tech-minded, and that a lot of you either work as programmers in your day job or mess around with code when you get home. But just how important is coding as a skill to you?
One of Lifehacker’s core ideas is that the approach used for programming — systematic, curious, and realising that there’s often more than one solution — works pretty well in running the rest of your life. So naturally we’re curious just how involved our readers are in actual programming, either for their day job or as a serious hobby. So a poll seems in order:
Feel free to expand upon your coding clout or the role programming plays in your life in the comments.
poedgirl
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:20 PMI make a living writing code, my official title tho is “Application Development Manager.”
Andreas Koepke
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:31 PMI am a coder, it is one of the many things I do each day along with system admin and dekstop support.
Stephen
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:32 PMi seem to spend the majority of my time writing process and building VBA or access to patch issues our primary system won’t do. But its not my job.
Martin
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:37 PMI used to enjoy coding. my previous job killed what I enjoyed doing with stupid and idiotic requests that basically required me to code a mind reading module to figure out the exact requirements.
its been 2 years now (im a dba now), and the love still hasnt come back.
Peter
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:21 PMThis poll will be biased though. People who code are likely going to be more interested in the story and hence more likely to click through and vote.
Vivian Farrell
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 5:45 PMAgreed
david
Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 7:34 PMI agree. I very nearly didn’t click on the RSS link for ‘do you write code for a living’ cause my immediate answer was ‘nope.’
Mike Williams
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:14 PMI coded for a living for years, but as I moved into more design and project management work I found that I didn’t have time for it any more. After that I found that being too code-focused made me less able to speak for the end-user, something you see all the time when coders say their users can always “write a little script” or “patch their own distro” to solve a problem. Yerrr right.
Even though it’s about 15 years since I wrote any serious amount of code, the basic knowledge is intact. I can still call *bullshit* on developers and support engineers who try to play tech-Jedi tricks on me when they don’t want to do something.
66biscuits
Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 10:21 PMThe results are very clear for this readership.
My job involves a lot of coding and I am pretty much the only one in a company of 35 employees that can do it. Unfortunately I’m in the travel industry so I’m seen as an expensive team member (relative to others in the business) as opposed to a very cheap programmer. Woe is me
James
Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 4:26 AMI’m stunned by these poll results.
topcat
Monday, January 24, 2011 at 10:42 AMI lecture in first year programming at University. I don’t write code every day but it is central to what I do.
boris
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 8:29 PMsenior analyst programmer for a big 4 bank, I hate programming now, but what you gonna do?
been coding for 15 years now
my suggestion for anyone that enjoys coding that they don’t do it for a living or all the joy they get will be quickly drummed out of them with the day-to-day drudgery of it
scootah
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 5:39 PM@Boris – My advice is that if you love coding, don’t take a job with a white collar enterprise cube farm. There’s a huge difference between coding for a living building things that you love and coding for a living for the soulless black hole that is white collar IT.
I’m a systems engineer for a soulless black hole of despair white collar IT shop. I spend more time writing code in my current role than anything else though. Automating issue resolution, preventative maintenance and SOE standardization is basically my day. Not at all what my job description describes – but beats help desk.