[Rerarom]

Programming is not by itself an art, so it doesn't fulfill people's self-expression needs (although it may contain bits of art like e.g. video games).

You cannot create "almost anything" with coding, it's not like I can bake fries by typing some code.

I do not write this in jest, I just find that people tend to overestimate coding.

[prepend]

I think coding is different things to different people. So sometimes it’s hard to sync up and have a useful conversation.

I believe you can create anything with coding. You can automate home routines. You can figure how the best dose of vitamins and supplements. You can optimize finances. It’s pretty limitless. Not to mention staring at a screen, giving it commands and seeing the result for hours just being fun. In both a meditative way and a discovering secrets way.

But for many people, it’s a job and not interesting in and of itself.

Someone mentioned painting and there are painters who make art and do it for expression. And there are painters who paint houses. They are both fine professions and really just a choice or an orientation. I don’t do either, but I think the artist painter will do lots of side projects outside her studio while the house painter is less likely to paint too many houses pro bono.

This doesn’t mean programmers who code outside of work are superior humans. I think any company who has this as a binary hiring decision is missing out that there are great programmers who don’t do it out of passion. I once worked with a programmer who didn’t own a computer (in 2005) and he was good. And there are hobby programmers who suck at work even though they have lots of personal projects.

[arvinsim]

> I believe you can create anything with coding. You can automate home routines. You can figure how the best dose of vitamins and supplements. You can optimize finances. It’s pretty limitless. Not to mention staring at a screen, giving it commands and seeing the result for hours just being fun. In both a meditative way and a discovering secrets way.

> But for many people, it’s a job and not interesting in and of itself.

I am one of those people who want to only code at work. I also enjoy programming a lot.

My problem with "coding for fun" for me is that anything interesting that I want to build gets tedious after the initial, easy and fun parts are implemented. I end up trying to fix edge cases and debug hard to fix bugs.

At that point it feels like a chore to do.

> This doesn’t mean programmers who code outside of work are superior humans. I think any company who has this as a binary hiring decision is missing out that there are great programmers who don’t do it out of passion. I once worked with a programmer who didn’t own a computer (in 2005) and he was good. And there are hobby programmers who suck at work even though they have lots of personal projects.

Exactly. People who want to do something else don't go around demeaning people who code in their free time. But the opposite does happen.

[criley2]

> it's not like I can bake fries by typing some code.

I mean, you'd need hardware, but cooking based on software is obviously a very real thing.

If you can code a bartender, why not a baker? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DopvpNF7J4

[woranl]

To me, coding is more of an art. There are beauty and expression in it, not just a bunch of syntax put together.

[matz1]

Programming by itself can also be an art. It fit the definition of art.