Zhihu summary: What is the original intention of writing programs?

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Author: Liquid Leakage Sauce

The first time I came into contact with "programming" was in the sixth grade of elementary school. On the way home from math class that day, I bought a book of CS strategy. The last page of the book recorded several scripts for buying guns. Somehow, I felt that there was an irresistible force guiding me to enter this script into the CS console (I don't remember whether I entered it directly into the console or typed it into Notepad first and then imported it). After recording the script, I pressed that key, and sure enough, the system automatically bought B41 O2 O4 O5 for me. After that, I often rushed out and got shot in the head while my stupid teammates were still shopping.

If I copied a script just by chance, I probably wouldn't fall in love with programming. Then I looked at the script and found a value in it that was used to define the purchase of AK47. But a refined man like me would definitely not use a crude weapon like AK. So I replaced the MP5 code I found in several other scripts in the book with AK47, and clicked it again. Damn, I actually bought this one.

Now it may not seem like a big deal, but at my sixth grade level, I was like, I can’t even control how much money my mom gives me in the afternoon, but I can change the behavior of the game by typing a few words, that’s awesome!

This incident only led me to embark on this path. As for why I never looked back, I understood it more the older I got.

I don’t know if you have similar thoughts to me. I always feel that there are too many things around me that I can’t control. From the big things like birth, aging, illness and death, to the small things like whether you will be stuck in a traffic jam when taking a taxi. From doctors trying their best but unable to save patients, to you pouring out your heart but unable to win the favor of your secret crush.

In short, in a world full of uncertainties, there will always be many areas where your abilities are beyond your capabilities. There are many things where you put in 120% of your effort but still fail, and no one tells you why.

But in the world of programming, there is no magic. The same input will always have the same output, and 0 and 1 will never fool you. So in theory, the problems you encounter in programming are all caused by your own negligence or mistakes, but these negligence and mistakes can be traced, and you can solve them all by yourself.

To put it in a broader sense, you can create anything you want in the program world, and then slowly evolve and transform it. You don't need to look at other people's faces or figure out what others are thinking. This is the true realm of one code, one world.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but anyway, this is my original intention for writing programs.

Author: Lin Xixi

QAQ Let me try to answer this question first. (Actually, I am just writing an essay with a similar topic) So I also invited @Cheny Dimpurr to answer this question.

------------------(ゝ∀･)Laugh---------------------------------

As a programmer who has been exposed to VB since elementary school, my original intention for programming should be derived from a cool feeling, which is a unique sense of satisfaction that can be achieved both from the outside and from the inside. I think this may be the original intention of many programmers, and it is what many programmers are constantly pursuing now. That is "cool". Excluding all other considerations, we want to do a cool thing, a great project, so that when others see this project, they will say "Wow, this is great!", and then they can enjoy a geek feeling and look down on the world. To put it in a more popular way, it means that you can "pretend to be envied and admired in front of others" and then say "It's nothing" with a shy smile, leaving a noble impression. This feeling can be said to be a kind of satisfaction that can be obtained as a member of society, apart from the programmer himself. And becoming a programmer is a relatively possible path to achieve. This is the original intention generated by the outside world.

Another part of the original intention comes from within. Just like what is said in the answer next door, "As vulgar as we are, we can also be creators and give souls to other things." This is a sense of satisfaction from "creation." With a feeling that maybe one day, the program I make can also have such an elegant UI design, or a sophisticated backend design. That kind of exquisite design sense will give people who see it a shocking power that cannot be described in words, and even the word "God-made" that is full of unrealistic colors can describe it. I remember that the joy I felt when I wrote the quick sort for the first time must be no less than that of the person who proved Fermat's Last Theorem. We are like artists, using the tools in our hands, as craftsmen of this digital world, creating virtual continents and reconstructing the real world.

-----(ゝ∀･) laugh------

The original intention has been concluded above, but I think that what drives us to continue to write programs is not only the "original intention", but also a kind of evolving cognition. Just like what is said in "The Hacker and the Painter", "When a good designer sees a bad design, he will have an impulse to correct it", and programmers are doing just such a job. When we see the design in our daily life, "Maybe this thing can be done better by the program", and then take action, coding. This is an example of changing life through programs. In this digital world, because people share experiences to a large extent, the almost zero-cost software dissemination has become the best way to make life more convenient. This is also the reason why I continued to learn programming some time ago. I hope that through programming, I can make the world I live in more convenient, and I will no longer be delayed by many troublesome situations, and at the same time, this can also solve the same problems of others. Aren't so many of our daily "efficiency" applications derived from this point of view?

-----(ゝ∀･)The following is a severe case of chuunibyou (laughs------

As a person who loves to play, especially computer games, my original intention, to a large extent, comes from a distant dream. I hope that I can enter a "world of swords and magic" like the characters in novels and animations, break through the boring and tiring life, and explore the unknown and great world with my ideal partners.

Like DnD, I divide the program in a broad sense into three parts of the earth, using the same three-layer model (mathematical rules, data and settings, story and background). The inner layer (core) is mathematics and logic, a collection of the most basic practices of the program, including data structures and algorithms. This is the part of programming that belongs to mathematics, and it serves as the core to support the entire framework. Here, various great gods have appeared to discuss different algorithms, encryption and decryption, and operations. The elegance of mathematics is reflected here, given to computer operations. Mathematicians who like to be here carefully prove their own algorithms (CHA others' algorithms), hoping to give more efficient answers. The second layer is the middle layer (mantle), where programming and the world are combined, the front-end layout, new equipment (Oculus Saigao!), and more powerful engines exist here. We use these things to give all users a more realistic experience, and at the same time give great expansion, so that users can do things that exist in this world that cannot be achieved. The third layer (shell) is a container created by the objects in the first two layers, storing countless contents and people's fantasy of a virtual world that has been realized or not yet realized. On the "surface", we use our imagination to create new worlds (new planes) from nothingness. The virtual world of swords and magic in dreams connects our real world through core and mantle. So I hope I can wander in the mantle and do my best to open up the connection between the two ends.

above

Author: In good

1. Narration

At first I refused! Because I don't like programming at all.

I was not good at math, physics and chemistry since high school. Things like permutations and combinations, conic sections, charged particles in electromagnetic fields, and water dissociation and ionization in aqueous solutions haunted me like a nightmare.

During the college entrance examination, a wisp of smoke came out of my ancestral grave. I scored 88 in mathematics, a record-breaking score of 200 in comprehensive science. The data was not only beautiful and touching, but also auspicious and prosperous! Finally, I got into the dream college of Computer Science and Technology Class 1202 with a total score of 522 - I was destined to be a 2nd-class university!

But I actually refused to learn programming - I spent a year studying psychology in my freshman year, a year studying philosophy in my sophomore year, and a year studying Chinese medicine in my junior year - as a result, I failed "Discrete Mathematics", "Digital Logic", "Data Structure", and "Compiler Principles" - I wanted to hang myself!

God is watching what you do, and you will have to pay for what you have done! I once firmly believed that "I was born with talent and it will be useful", "How can I be a weed man"; I once believed that "whatever you wish for will come true", "where there is a will, there is a way"; I once wished that "God will bless those who have been gifted", "good wind will help me soar to the sky". However, a question as cold as purple lightning and blue frost came to me: What else can I do if I don't write programs?

However, I can't program at all! Imagine how difficult it is for a person who can only type with the index finger of his right hand, the index finger of his left hand, and the ring finger of his left hand to type code! Imagine how much imagination a science idiot who got 19 points in the advanced math supplementary exam and whose mind is full of grand narratives can have when writing programs!

Later, when I went to the company for internship, the first project I encountered was to use

ESFramework

Communication framework, when I first saw the following sentence in the development manual, I knew that spring would never come again!

The client can complete basic functions or get notifications of related state changes by calling the corresponding methods of the ESPlus.Application.pasic.Passive.IpasicOutter interface and subscribing to its related events. We can get the IpasicOutter reference from the pasicOutter property exposed by ESPlus.Rapid.IRapidPassiveEngine.

Interface, reservation, event, exposure, attribute, reference, if you come at me one by one, I can still roughly understand it, but if you all attack me together, I will be helpless!

After sending the request information, the overloaded Query method (with CallpackHandler parameter) will not be blocked and will continue to execute. When the framework receives the corresponding reply information, it will call back the method pointed to by the CallpackHandler delegate. Since the calling thread and the reply callback thread are not the same thread, this mechanism is called reply asynchronous call.

When I saw "overload" and "blocking", I was completely furious! Then the "delegate" and "callback" that came into my eyes made me even more angry! Finally, "thread" and "asynchronous" made me completely disappointed and heartbroken!

From then on, I walked in the dangerous programming world with a clumsy attitude. Could it be that the rain stopped in the cold night, the weather was burying flowers, the north wind blew against the thin clothes; the wilderness was silent, the monkeys cried in the distance, and the jackdaws flew nearby; the ghosts were everywhere, and I was frightened at every step. I didn't know what day it was.

Many times I thought, don't waste your energy, you are not cut out for programming! People who are truly suitable for programming cannot be like this!

So I gave up. But what else can I do if I don't write programs? After all, I went to college for four years, and there is no turning back. I still have to go against the wind and the current with ambition, and live up to the people's love for me!

Finally, the soaking in the bitter water hurt the skin, tempered the body and mind, and at the same time watered the flower of Nirvana!

One day, I suddenly discovered that those technical documents that seemed difficult to understand before now seem straightforward, those grammars that were difficult to understand before can now be used skillfully, and those source codes that I couldn’t understand before can now flow under my fingers. Before the internship, I couldn’t even write a loop statement correctly, but now I can develop a decent network communication application using frameworks such as ESFramework and OMCS.

2. Discussion

More importantly, from not liking, not being good at, and not being confident in the beginning, to now being able to write programs with a happy heart and being able to start my programming life with a happy mood, this is not only a great wealth I have gained, but also a great happiness I have grasped!

Mr. Hu Shih once said: "Why fear the infinite truth? Every inch of progress brings joy." The infinite truth is not scary, because we always gain joy in every inch of progress. The road to programming is not an easy one, and we are not gifted. However, the happiest person is not a programming expert who can play with code, nor an IT elite with billions of assets, but the one who always writes code with joy in the passing years, and gains joy forever through writing code!

As the saying goes, "Men are afraid of choosing the wrong profession, and women are afraid of marrying the wrong man." If you want to marry a man, you should marry a man who loves you. A loving man is only as good as drinking water, while a heartless man is tasteless! The same is true for entering a profession. If you enter a profession you love, you will be happy in every move you make; if you enter a profession you hate, you will be miserable in every move you make! The happiness of marrying a man does not lie in the wealth and splendor that the man brings, but in the man himself. Those women who marry a man to gain external benefits, at best, have only achieved business success, but have not gained the happiness of marriage itself. Isn't this a kind of buying a box and returning the pearl? Similarly, those who use work as a pure means have never gained the happiness of work itself.

From this point of view, I think for the vast majority of programmers - you are not truly happy!

All programmers can probably be roughly divided into these five states:

1. Not in love, but forced to make a living

2. No feeling, just follow suit

3. Passionate, but exhausted physically and mentally

4. Fanaticism, like a shot of chicken blood

5. Be happy, because you enjoy it.

Which one are you?

If I had to choose, I would definitely choose 5, because only in this way can we obtain the true meaning of program life and have the inner perfection of mutual integration. The other states are incomplete to varying degrees.

Perhaps we always write programs for various external purposes, but the small happiness when writing programs is always the habitat of our spiritual birds. As Confucius praised Yan Hui: "How virtuous Hui is! He has only a bowl of rice and a jug of water, living in a humble alley. People cannot bear the worry, but Hui does not change his joy. How virtuous Hui is!"

When I stop writing, all the dust and smoke have cleared. I hope that the life that I have just started can be free from worldly affairs and be quiet and happy.