Regarding how best to expose programming to a foreign audience...

Question

I'm writing a novel at the moment and, while programming will not be receiving a great deal of focus, I do want to at least get it into the reader's head that a character's coding background could cause them to be the way there are about various things.

So, my question is this: what d'you reckon is the best way to talk about the art in such a manner that the reader gains a bit of comprehension without being scared away? Should I drop "smart-sounding" keywords here and there? Include a bit of actual code? All suggestions are welcome...

Answer 1

Programming is like solving a puzzle where the picture is always changing and the number of pieces is made random at random intervals..thats programming, and in the old days, programmers used to be geniuses because of that need to be inventive and creative to come up with unbelievable solutions..

Software Engineering is making that definition of programming something workable (predictable, manageable) on a day to day basis.

Evolution in work as a programmer has given us tools that minimize the amount of genius required on the basic tasks so that we can focus the same genius on tasks unthinkable some years ago.

The future of programming is coming up with unthinkable ways of doing wonderful things impossible today soon.

Answer 2

Have one of the characters that is not a programmer interact with the programmer. The programmer will have to explain something about the problem to the layman. This explanation can

• set up a future story point, where the thing being explained will become important or useful.
• do some character development of the programmer
• possibly be interesting in its own right

good luck!

Answer 3

1. Relate programming to any real world actity like "Singing, Dancing, Cooking, Fishing" etc.

2. Once you choose that, (Say for example, Cooking), you can go on compare activities involved in cooking with that of programming.

3. To do cooking (Coding), you need to know what you want to cook (Software Requirement). Then you need utensils (Tools), you need to spend time for cooking (Development time), you need to inform the person waiting for food on whats going on (Status update), taste the food once to ensure salt, spice etc. are correct (Testing), you need arrange the food in nice manner (Packaging, Documentation), Serve it (Delivery), take a feedback and improve :)

Answer 4

Talk about emotions, about what the programmer feels when working at its craft. Talk about his moments of doubt, his moments of pride.

Talk about his relations with his manager, his colleages, his friends and family.

If you want the reader get empathy with your character, talk about what is universal in programmer's way of living, not about what is specific.

Not novel-related, but an excellent base for storytelling: take a look at Story, by Robert McKee.

Answer 5

Software development is unique in that the result is seen pretty quickly and the result can be duplicated pretty quickly too. That's why software developers can change important things (hopefully for the better) just with several keystrokes. You should show several simple positive examples of how a developer changes something in the project he works on for the better and other people immediately recognize it. I think this can be done without smart keywords exclusive of the keywords most people already know (like server, program, web page).

Answer 6

I have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and now I'm reading The Girl Who Played with Fire (a trilogy by Stieg Larsson).

The main character is Salander, a 26 year old girl who is amazing at hacking. The author does a really good job of explaining details of how she achieves this - by keeping it simple and explains the knock-on-effect on characters and the main plot.

Reading technical jargon can be really boring (and confusing), but if jargon is simple and it directly affects a character who scams three billion dollars from a corrupt company, then it makes for good reading.