Serious question. We had a perfectly serviceable word, yet everyone decided to shift. Is it just that it’s shorter to type?
If so, I feel for your colleagues trying to parse your code when all your variables use abbreviations.
You must log in or # to comment.
Programming could also refer to lower paid jobs operating machines, like a CNC Programmer or Radio programs.
So the real computer software people started using the term “software engineering”. But that’s too long, so ‘coding’.
In my personal experience, “coding” has been used as long as I can remember, but took over as the dominating term maybe 8-12 years ago.
I also prefer to say programming still. Coding sounds weird to me because it has its own separate (though certainly related) meanings.
It could be regional or arbitrary. I say ‘coding’ a lot because it’s shorter. I could say one is about the keyboard work and one is about the architecture and design, but it’s really the fact that one’s shorter.
But in my environment, they’re interchangeable as much as anything can be. And I’ve grown up using both; even in college in the '90s, coding C and m68k.
YMMV?
It’s probably predominantly because of the switch to mobile computing / smartphones / web being dominant, and everyone referring to programs there as “apps” / applications.
i.e. If you write a mobile app with a function-as-a-service backend, you will never compile what someone would refer to as a “program”, so calling yourself a “programmer” (as-in, someone who makes programs) feels inaccurate and a not helpful description for people. “Coder” (as-in, someone who writes code) is a vaguer in terms of the type of code you write and more accurate in terms of what you spend your time producing.
How is a mobile app or a function-as-a-service not a program though? They are clearly programs, at least to me.
If you’re a user who grows up using one, and then starts following instructions on how to build one, when are you going to come across the word program?
It will be app, maybe application, saas software, functions a service, compute as a service etc etc. Hell what most people think of as an “app” is really a collection of applications all working together.
I see what you mean now, you were talking about what words people use, not whether the definition of the word program applies to something.
Still more acceptable, in my opinion, than going from “using” to “leveraging”…
I remember it from the 2000’s. The internet was up and we could all share our own pet names for things or just make up a new word. mIRC and newsgroups were big on that. Weird times but cool for sure. Some of it stuck. I still use the exclamation ‘Blargh’ occasionally.
The first time I remember it was someone from California asked me to ‘code summin’ for their daughter. I had to make sure what they were asking of me before I agreed. 2002 maybe.
