That is exactly the motivation. Provide a clear path and precedent for government developers to open source their projects. Right now we are inviting comments and criticism for the approach to gauge the community response.

> I hate the word coders. Lets stop using it

It's a perfectly good, long established term for the people who review substantive facts and assign codes from a standard list, as is common in the medical billing field.

Let's keep using it, just not when we mean "programmers".

Care to elaborate? What's wrong with the word "coders"?

Back in an earlier era of computing, there was a strict hierarchy of jobs:

An analyst took business requirements and wrote specifications.

A programmer took those specifications and created flowcharts of the program logic.

A coder took the flowcharts and translated them into code on a coding form.

A keypunch operator punched the code onto cards, line by line, card by card.

So "coder" was a rather low status job, just one rung above being a typist.

This hierarchy hasn't been relevant for at least 40 years. There are software developers in their 30s who have literally never seen a punchcard in person. Coder doesn't mean the same thing it used to mean.

It hasn't been relevant for at least 40 years for most people in this industry. My first job was in an organization with exactly these people, except that "operators" (of which I was one at when I started as a teenager about twenty years ago) had several component levels of hierarchy within it. Sysop, Print Op, and at the very bottom of the ladder, the Tape Op, whose job is to be the robot arm that our organization refused to pay for (no shit). Now, I'm still in contact with a couple of people that I used to work with, and one of whom still works there (though now he is a programmer upstairs). That hierarchy does still exist. We did, however, have a card-punching machine. You fed cards into the hopper, and a computer did the punching. So we didn't have a keypunch operator. But I still have a stack of cards somewhere in my house. I'll have to ask if they still use that equipment.

Is it just me, or is this typical HN elitism?

the "lets stop using it" comment, yes. Stratoscope's comment was just explaining why it hurts some big egoes. s/he didn't take any position on it.

I think what you're reading is an recounting of history, rather than a prescription of how things should be.

Someone working at an auto plant once told me they "worked on software", they were a "coder", because they loaded the chips into the machine and pressed the button to flash firmware to the chips.

Others involved in "coding" might attach a laptop to an ethernet, USB, RS-232, etc., port in an industrial machine and use command-line tools or GUIs to configure a device or monitor/diagnose a situation.

There's so much so-called "coding" that doesn't involve actual "software development" that I'm uncomfortable with the terms "coding" and "coder" ... though I'm OK with "code" (as in meat), but not with "a software code" (as in "a pork chop").

EDIT: distinction between "code" as in meat and "a code" as in a pork chop.

Coders is ambiguous, e.g. medical coders.

Many English words support multiple definitions. Programmers and developers can both be argued to have similar ambiguities.

Developers, certainly. Programmers...I'm not aware of another use of that other that creating software.

Programmers are also people who schedule broadcast programming or otherwise determines broadcast content.

I had wondered if that was a thing; hadn't heard it.

Anyway, software developers, computer programmers, and software engineers have no ambiguity. Shorten those if you want, but "coders" is a leap.

Coders is empirically not ambiguous to the point of impeding communication, given that coder is actually in use. Language changes over time. Choosing to try to prevent that is of course something you may do, but it rarely will prevent change from happening.

My goodness, within this field itself computer used to refer to a person, not a machine. Run into any ambiguity there recently?

> Language changes over time.

And so I will continue to champion the language uses I want to see. E.g. internet instead of Internet, regardless instead of irregardless, "access" as both a noun and verb, programmer/developer/engineer instead of coder.

May the best word win.

Why? It's pretty descriptive.

Personally, and I'd like to stress that this is my opinion, I feel that the term is very reductive. It has its etymology in "code", when programming encompasses much more than just writing code. (we also write documentation, tests, use complex tools, version control, invoke the command line, etc...) It evokes the term "code monkey" which just sees programmers as tools to barf out code. Lastly this is just my own conceit, but I believe that the term just doesn't describe the approach used well which spans so many different methodologies and concepts. (to throw some keywords out there: TDD, Agile, idioms, patterns) To say that developers merely write code is like calling engineers builders or doctors healers. (again, those terms wouldn't be wrong, but quite reductive)

Writing code isn't hard at all. I could teach someone how to write working hello world programs in a day. The hard part is architecting these projects to be readable, modular, extensible, efficient, and to follow standards.

Also not the OP, but this is exactly why I don't use the term except in a pejorative sense. Code is a tool in my toolbox; it is not what I do, it is what I may apply to a problem if it is appropriate to do so. If I describe someone as a coder, it's because I don't particularly trust them to solve problems that don't involve code (and I probably don't trust them to solve problems that do, either).

It is funny, because on a personal level, I have a rather distinct, if not opposite feeling about "code". But I never thought of it this way before thinking this answer. Thanks for that, and here goes.

First I tend to split the word from its meaning (because ontology matters, right?). I say "we code" just like "a driver goes back to his wheel" when we really mean his car, it's a figure of speech. Using a distinctive, hallmark part of something to refer to the entire thing (a "sail" for a boat, a "roof" for a home, etc.) When I hear a special one saying to a third party "oh he's coding", knowing she knows pretty well actual code writing is like 10% of the work, I hear "he's working, programming, doing his job/hobby". This thing.

I agree that a smug face dropping a condescending "that guy's a coder" may not be a particularly nice feeling though (but I personally hear "I'm too stupid to understand what this guy does, or I don't like doing it myself, so I'll just be a douche about it because it makes me feel better about myself", and laugh it out as you would imagine).

Then, the meaning. I come from a science background/interest, so there's code of the highest and noblest kind everywhere: DNA in bio, but also HLA; the Standard Model, and Information Theory, etc. Our reality is just a biologically-biased (i.e. "human") perception of what is, for all intents and purposes, code in the most fundamental of meanings. Even human languages are just code for our brains to communicate states.

So when I see our tiny civilization harnessing matter and energy into complex electronics, packing whole cities of transistors into powerful machines that spell a dramatically new turn in our quest against entropy (in other words one physicist's answer to "what is the goal of civilization?"), and how it's all just code... I don't know, but it inspires awe more so than anything (note that I don't care one bit how others see it, it's very personal). I see something graceful in the way we do that, in the way computer code is just our abstraction for finite state machines, just like a living cell runs on DNA and below all the cosmos runs on quantum fields. I tend to consider it a beautiful achievement that we've been able to abstract so much, so deep, considering the man hours required to replicate the activity of just one modern CPU.

Sorry for a long post, totally off topic as it stands. It's just that the social and historical perspective that gives coding a bad name rubs me in exactly the wrong way, as if it were belittling a god to say they've encoded this universe, or if the DNA in people (and links between them) wasn't just about one of the most important factor in their constitution and evolution. Code matters, as far as we know, and actually literally.

A TL;DR/ last minute poetry illustration: saying "a winery makes wine" doesn't fail to honor their work because we ommitted the seven hours out of nine when they're not actually making it; on the contrary the very superior nature of the resulting nectar speaks for itself of the high nature of their trade as a whole, and it's gratifying that we don't speak of all the behind-the-scenes not-so-glamourous aspects of it.

So I make code. How's that not beautiful in every possible way? :)

I'm not the OP but it does have an air of condescension/reductiveness about it, like calling carpenters "hammerers."

> Why? It's pretty descriptive.

IMO, programming consists of two main tasks: developing abstract algorithms to achieve desired goals and reducing those abstract alogorithms to concrete code. While both are essential, the hard, interesting, and more valuable part is the first, and "coder" captures the second.

(Software development encompasses even more tasks.)

Developer > Programmer > Coder

(Leaving aside, for the moment, the collision of "coder" with a completely unrelated profession.)

> While both are essential, the hard, interesting, and more valuable part is the first, and "coder" captures the second.

Depends on what you find interesting. I'd almost consider this an elitist attitude. Eventually, somebody has to do the actual work to implement the abstract algorithms, and it's really a lot better when you've got a talented person that cares about those nuts and bolts details and the realities of hardware and networks and runtime performance.

> Eventually, somebody has to do the actual work to implement the abstract algorithms

Sure, and that's, as I said, also an essential part of programming, which is a strict superset of writing code.

What other word would you prefer to use for people who write code?

People who write computer programs are "programmers", people who assign standardized codes to turn instructured domain information into structured data are "coders". These terms were both in wide and consistent use before some people (apparently people with narrow knowledge in tech management) decided to start calling programmers "coders".

Those of us working as programmers in environments where we not-infrequently work with actual coders appreciate the distinction being preserved.

Well people who write novels are novelists and people who write plays are playwrights so I submit either 'codist' or 'codewright'.

People who golf are golfers and people who act are actors.

shrug

Codœristwrights then.

Hey buddy, why don't you just stop using it, and also consider not trying to force your will onto others through snide, empty internet comments