What exactly is programming?

I call my blog Solo Programmer and when people ask what I do I say I’m a programmer but lately the work I do isn’t really much what I’d call programming. Actually I have a bunch of real programming project on my plate but today’s work involved installing Word Press and a bunch of plugins, configuring Google analytics and other such tasks. Not really programming and yet something that I can do in large part because of my tech background.

Sure “non programmers” can do all the above. You don’t really need a ton of tech savvy to install Word Press. But “non programmers” do HTML right? Well if you’re writing HTML by hand what you’re doing is pretty close to programming. Certainly once you get into JavaScript or PHP what you’re going is legitimately programming.

I remember once in grad school a Professor saying “In the near future we won’t need programmers at all”. I was momentarily concerned since this was how I planned to make my living. He then proceeded to show how you could tie together some (I think it was) ActiveX components to build a new application. And then if you wanted some specific behavior it’s “just a little code”.

Ignoring the very important idea that someone somewhere needs to be writing these components in the first place, the very combining and writing “just a little code” to glue it together is actually programming. Perhaps not something that you need an advanced degree to accomplish but something beyond the reach of your typical computer user.