Its September…

Where did August go? The last I remembered it was the middle of July. The days slip by so fast. It must be age. The older you get the faster time fly’s. Much has happened. The most significant is a pending job change. I am staying with the same company but will be working in a different organization as a Manager. I haven’t held a management position since 2000. That position ended with a layoff when the company decided to outsource all development. Never really planned on getting back into the management end of IT, was just going to stick with my passion for development. But an opportunity popped up and I just could not resist. So, I start in my new position on monday the 10th of September.
I am just finishing up an interesting book titled “The Best Software Writing I” selected and introduced by Joel Spolshy. This is not my typical technical book. However, it caught my eye because I am in the middle of documenting a major development effort that is completing this week. Thought it might give me some insight into good writing. As it turns out this book is not about writing. Well not in the sense I expected. It doesn’t tell you what elements make up a well written document. What it does present are a number of well written articles on different facets of IT. One in particular presented definitions for “Programmer” and “Developer”. Eric Sink in his “Hazards of Hiring” defines programmer as

“a programmer is someone who does nothing but code new features and [if you’re lucky] fix bugs. They don’t write specs. They don’t write automated test cases. they don’t help keep the automated build system up to date. They don’t help the customer work out tough problems. They don’t help write documentation. They don’t help with testing. They don’t even read code. All they do is write new code.”

He goes on to define a Developer as one who

“contributes in multiple ways to make the product successful.”

Developers do all those things programmers don’t. In my view, these definitions nail the programmer vs developer terms.