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.
Still more acceptable, in my opinion, than going from “using” to “leveraging”…
Could have been worse, it could have turned into “apping”.
Code was in use relating to the set of instructions used to control a computer in 1946; with it becoming a verb by 1986. Programming was from 1945 as a first use in regards to computers; meaning "cause to be automatically regulated in a prescribed way.
Now the funny thing is the noun ‘Program’ in regards to computers in 1945 meant “series of coded instructions which directs a computer in carrying out a specific task”
So if we really work through the etymology a bit, coded instructions was first, then Program/ming, then Code and coding; though certainly ‘encoding’ would have been used before programming given the definition of ‘coded instructions.’
So… Blame Ada Lovelace for not coming up with something catchy like ‘lacing’ which would have been far more camp (and much more accurate to the gender of early programmers).
And be grateful that we didn’t start calling it “apping”, even though the term “program” is effectively extinct these days.
this is awesome, thanks!
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.
Iirc it kinda started getting used interchangeably in the 60s but spawned from the term/name Fortran automatic coding systems… I def would need to hit my search engine of choice and do some digging however. As for the mass public usage sometime 2010ish? With all that learn to code and code.org stuff coming into the mainstream.
Cool. I’m drunk and don’t care to do any digging, so if you’d like to do that on my behalf …
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’.
I think the window for having that debate was some time around 1992.
I started as a CS major in 1997, and the term was not used.
In your specific circles.
The CS department at the University of Washington with all sorts of tech companies starting up? I mean, sure, if you want to believe your timeline, you’re free to feel that way, but claiming this was standard by 1992 is ludicrous to me.
People at the University of Washington don’t refer to soda pop the same way as people at Berkley, or at MIT, or at Oxford. Why would they all have had the exact same term for writing software?
Edit: I’m being argumentative, I honestly have no idea what term was common then. At that point most people I knew referred to it as “computer stuff”
Since you’ve admitted to being argumentative, I’ll point out that you misspelled Berkeley. I was accepted there into EECS, though neither MIT nor Oxford. As it turns out, if you don’t apply, they don’t notice you.
This is a guess but I feel like it was around the time that most coding was done for things that weren’t explicitly “programs”, like web design CSS/Java and smartphone “apps”.
Yea this vibes.
For me, it felt like coding was a more attractive term for people who weren’t “proper” computer science and “engineering” types who weren’t confident that they knew what “program” meant or even “algorithm”, as they were working things as they went.
I’d guess that as computing involved more and more people with this non-standard background, coding became preferred. I certainly encountered people uncomfortable with my casual use of “algorithm” because it triggered their imposter syndrome, and my pointing out that they write algorithms with the code the write all the time certainly didn’t help.
Also anyone writing scripts, or even just using stuff like AWS Lambda / functions as a service, etc. etc.
I described myself as a coder for a while starting somewhere around '03 or '04 IIRC.
