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Mycroft Holmes wrote: And that is the difference between a programmer and a developer.
I'm not so sure. I'm a lead developer and I design systems from the bottom up so I certainly wouldn't label myself as a programmer. I'd consider myself to be a creative person in general terms (I write, I make music, I cook and all the rest of it) but I see my professional role as being primarily that of an artisan rather than an artist.
Perhaps this perception is coloured by what I do - I've always worked on business systems and I'm back-end biased. If I'm designing a database, I'm generally working to a specified level of normalisation. If I'm writing a DAL, the requirement is very much for a robust and flexible DAL not something that will boldly go where no DAL has gone before. If I'm working on business logic, the prime directive is to adhere to the real-world business logic - there is no room at all for creativity in that, people can end-up going to jail for being creative with their accountancy. When I do work at the UI end of things, my customers expect a standard Microsoft look and feel.
In other areas of development (digital marketing springs to mind), creativity obviously has a bit more of a place and maybe that's where we should draw the distinction.
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I have difficulty differentiating between a developer and an architect, I do both, and let me tell you creativity is a definite requirement when interpreting some user requirements. Writing a DAL, not in the last 15 years, I write the code generator that writes my DAL.
The database and the UI are where you need creativity.
PeejayAdams wrote: I'm generally working to a specified level of normalisation You mean you get a spec, how weird, the only spec I can remember are the one I have had to write - AFTER the app goes to production.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: You mean you get a spec, how weird,
I should be so lucky! Probably a lot more than fifteen years since I was given one of those ...
No, I mean either the level specified by the coding standards or designated by myself for the project in question (I too, live somewhere in the murky world between architect and developer). The point is, writing a database (whether it be 3NF or 5NF) is an exercise that revolves far more around good practice and comprehension of RDBMS than it does around creative inspiration. You don't need to be a Pablo Picasso or a Miles Davis to write a good database, you need to be a good database engineer (all too rare a thing, unfortunately). There might well be a great little concept or two at the core of a database but it's still essentially about craft rather than art and the most innovative idea in the world is no good unless the more prosaic elements around it are done properly. I can't help but come back to the 99:1 perspiration to inspiration ratio.
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I can't agree with this. Best practices promote rather than limit creativity. Writing only to a framework is a sure fire way to have high coupling with a given framework. When the framework goes, so does all the crap you wrote on top. Curiosity needs focus, you can't be curious if you lack focus on what you want to learn.
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