Programming as Soulcraft

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"If I am learning, for instance, Russian, I am confronted by an authoritative structure which commands my respect. … My work is a progressive revelation of something which exists independently of me. Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something which my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal." -- Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics

This is a role education in programming can serve today.

Comments

  1. Crosbie2:34 PM

    Early successes in programming
    causes a strange hubris in many people which can be hard to eradicate. Many programmers retain a conviction that they can do just about anything with 'a few lines of code' despite all of the evidence of the the tar pit to the contrary. The awareness of 'something which my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal' seems to take a good fifteen years to emerge. I'd suggest the phenomenon called 'burnout' is just the first faint awareness of reality!

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