Lately we have been witnessing several narratives that: “Everyone needs to learn to program”, in fact, NO!!! Programming is not for everyone! It is only for: people who really like to program, students and professionals in the area.
Identifying true programmers is easy, not everyone has all these characteristics, but there is a large number of identities in the topics that we will see below: 16 things that only true programmers do!.
00.
For true programmers, all lists start from ZERO. Although they like languages such as: FORTRAN, Lua, Julia, MatLab and among others, lists, arrays, matrices and tables.
01.
Programmers use Vim or forks, similar or competing to Vim, such as: Emacs, Neovim and others. Having and creating your own shortcut keys in your environment is crucial for true programmers. Even IDEs and editors that are not Vim, they usually adapt and/or add features that make them similar to Vim!
02.
All programmers have impostor syndrome. A true programmer never thinks he or she is good at what he or she does. They always doubt their abilities and are always questioning whether or not what they did was the best way. That is why they are always modifying something that was already good.
03.
Programmers prefer relational databases and the SQL language. Modern databases like MongoDB are cool and cute, but real programmers always want to use databases like: MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, DuckDB, Postgres, SQL Server and others that use the SQL language.
04.
Programmers feel more comfortable using a UNIX-style operating system. Although he finds Windows tools important and understands how they work, he really likes systems like: Mac, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux, or better yet, GNU/Linux. That’s right, UNIX wasn’t good because of its kernel but because of the libc with development functions and command line tools like: Sed, Awk, Grep, Find, Cut, Cat and others.
05.
Real programmers don’t use Light mode, they attract bugs and eyesores, that’s a thing for NUTELLA programmers, the real ones use Dark mode, because their favorite time to develop their codes is in the dead of night, in the middle of the night!
06.
Speaking of tools for the terminal, real programmers prefer to execute everything via: COMMAND LINE. Clicking on cute little buttons is unpleasant and not very reliable.
07.
Programmers like and value C and C++. Sometimes they even work with other tools at work: JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python,… but when they’re at home and mining things in their mind, they always resort to C and C++, they love performance and speed. Pointers are not objects of fear and insecurity, in fact they are their favorite types.
08.
Real programmers prefer spaces to tabs. Although Python uses mandatory tabs for indentation, every time it can choose between tabs and spaces it resorts to spaces, because it favors something it is thinking about rendering in the terminal with UTF-8.
09.
Computers are cheaper and cooler, however, true programmers prefer notebooks! Yes, taking your notebook wherever you go is important. In addition to filling it with stickers that identify your trademark and your hidden loves.
10.
Filling the code with a bunch of comments is something only nutela programmers do. Programmers do not use comments, and when they do, it is only to write something essential and not anything that can be found in the documentation.
11.
By the way, speaking of documentation, programmers spend hours reading and judging documentation, it is one of their favorite hobbies! And many times they even modify algorithms and examples in the documentation.
12.
Programmers love to customize their work environment, setup and text editor from scratch. They are not lazy about doing this, but they don’t stop there either, they just adjust it according to their tastes to better focus on their codes.
13.
Programmers hate frameworks and programming languages ​​that look more like a framework. They like alternatives and not using tools that already come with things built-in, the famous: “bundled purchase”.
They like to choose their package managers, SCons and debugging tools… and so on. Programmers don’t like to feel manipulated.
14.
Package managers are cool, but they hide secrets! Programmers like to compile the source code. That’s why platforms like GitHub were and are so successful.
15.
Programmers do the same task at most twice, and the third time they want to automate it, which is why their work environment is full of scripts, aliases and shortcuts. Wasting time is a disaster for any programmer.
So, these are the 16 things that only true programmers do. Did you identify with any of these characteristics? Tell us in the comments!!!
