On the latest episode of the Stack Overflow podcast (episode #25), Steve Yegge mentioned how bad it was to get emotional with your favorite framework, language, technology, etc.
Do you call yourself a <insert your language here> developer? Is this a good thing?
I think everyone identifies with their code to an extent.
As for calling yourself a "<insert here> developer", the only word that is a good thing is "practical".
I call myself a C++ Windows programmer because that's what I currently do and have the most up-to-date experience with. I use a lot of other tools in my day-to-day job, and I've worked with various other languages, platforms, and technologies in the past, but I normally call myself what my current specialization is.
I've never really considered if it has any negative ramifications, but it seems to have been fine so far.
I call myself a software developer. I happen to work more in one language than in any of the others I know, but that's incidental. There are several languages that I could scratch out a living with if I had to.
I guess another way to look at this is "if I need to change my development language, is that going to be an easy transition?
I usually try to separate myself from my code, and (try to) practice the Whole Team and Collective Code Ownership practices of XP to help the project/product evolve into it's fullest potential.
Yes. I call it Toby.
But seriously, I have been know to get overly attached to my code and it's caused nothing but trouble. The more "professional" I get the more I am able to keep a straight face when that feature I spent the last three nights on get removed from the build.
Not sure I like the idea of only having one language under my belt..
To use an extreme example, say you had three children: Thomas, Meagan, and Stephen. Saying you're a [insertLangHere] programmer is like saying you're a Stephen kinda father. You love all of your children, not just one.
Every language has its uses, its beautiful and its ugly constructs. I think if you're not in some way attached to your code, how can it be good? We're not just engineers; in engineering, often there's a right answer and many wrong answers. We're artists. There are N different ways to solve any problem; some are better than others, but much of that is a matter of opinion. Personal attachment and conviction are musts.
I have been bitten by this.Regardless of the technology I suppose the working deliverable, the final object should be considered.
i used to be a very adamant about using Sharepoint in the enterprise, and the truth is that in some conditions the beast doesn't work.
I would agree to what Bill said.
Right now I believe, rather than having to identify with a set of languages and products, a person should invest and learn how to better implement, how to find good design patterns for common problems. I do not think this will ever go out of fashion.
Well we all are programmers and our languages, platforms, frameworks, toolkits etc. are just our tools for building software but our logic is that will "glue" our tools together and help us to build our great software, it is just like a hammer and the construction person, he will choose his hammer by his needs, sometimes bigger and heavier sometimes smaller depending on what he is working.
I get tied to my code, but not to my tools or frameworks.
I'm very proud of my own code and can get very angry when somebody doesn't keep my code formatted the way I like it, but I am indifferent to how they format their own code.
Associating yourself with somebody else's work seems like folly to me as it can go in a direction you don't approve of, yet your forced to defend since you associate yourself with it.
I call myself a consultant, developer, coach, and inventor. The choice of tool depends on the problem and the customer.
what would you think about a mechanic who referred to himself as a "Phillips" mechanic, as opposed to a "flathead" mechanic? Taking your identity from the tools is not just self-limiting, it's also kind of silly. ;-)
[for those who might not know, Phillips and flathead are types of screwdrivers]
The newer the code, the more I feel attached to it. Particularly if it's particularly elegant or solved a complicated problem. If its a modification to someone else's code, I couldn't care less about it. As it ages (especially if someone else has done any work on it), my attachment wanes.
Some of my older code - I just feel sorry for, like you would for an old dog that's always smells like she's wet and has accidents on the new floor once in a while. Poor code, it can't help it, it's just trying to get by day to day. It's practically senile.
I call my self a problem solver. Well, software problem solver. :-)
In The Psychology of Computer Programming, Gerald Weinberg talks about egoless programming. You are not your code. Moreover, languages, frameworks, libraries, practices and so on are just tools. We, as software developers, must learn them in order to both grow our toolset and know when to use each tool.
Kind Regards
I'm a computer scientist, a software engineer and a whole lot of other things. I never call myself a "Java coder" (or any kind of coder) when I'm talking to people: there are too many people that hear "coder" or "programmer" and think "oh, a code monkey. Just give him a banana and he'll be happy. Here you go, monkey! Nice banana!"
That said, Java and the related technologies have been paying my mortgage for a lot of years. I definitely identify with my mortgage so, by the transitive property, I guess I do identify pretty strongly with Java.
Just don't call me a "coder...".