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Programmer’s day | Roman Simiński, PhD Eng.

13.09.2021 - 13:31 update 13.09.2021 - 14:02
Editors: jp
Tags: save the date

13 September

PROGRAMMER’S DAY

Save the date with our scientists

„Save the date” is a series of articles that have been written to celebrate various unusual holidays. The authors of the presented materials are students, doctoral students and employees of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Silesia.

The Day of the Programmer is an international professional day that is celebrated on the 256th (the 28th) day of each year (September 13 during common years and on September 12 in leap years).

Roman Simiński, PhD Eng.
fot. private archive

ROMAN SIMIŃSKI, PhD Eng.


Assistant Professor

In the beginning, there is usually nothing. Blank sheet, blank editor window. Well, sometimes maybe there is something: some standard lines of some framework. But no matter how many useful things these lines can do, in fact there is still nothing functional at the beginning. Of course only technically, because at the beginning there is something in fact. Sometimes a passing thought, an elusive concept, and sometimes a very specific idea. And so the adventure begins. The adventure of creating a new programme. The adventure of forging thoughts, ideas and concepts into their computer exemplification. Specific, tangible, sensory. A programme is created that may be useful and needed every day, maybe just entertaining, or maybe one that opens the gates to new worlds, new sensations and experiences. A programmer is someone who takes these thoughts, ideas and concepts, and forges them into pure concrete. A concrete which usually consists of thousands lines of code.

Forging is something that is associated with a blacksmiths who create something out of the misshapen lump of metal. Sometimes this thing is just simply useful, like a horseshoe or a rail in a fence, sometimes it is even a work of art, like a samurai sword or Jan III Sobieski’s helmet. The effect of the programmer’s work is sometimes painfully practical in its usefulness, and sometimes it is almost a piece of art that can delight with the creation and finesse of the solutions used. All of this is a part of the current of professions, the immanent feature of which is creation, sometimes the effect of this process is something practical, sometimes even artistic, and sometimes these two properties are combined in one work.

Wherever the effect of this creation finds recipients and becomes a desired good, there is a tendency to make the process of creation an industrial production process. It’s no different with software development. Currently, programming has become an element of the widely understood software development process. Development in an industrial sense. Since software is easy to duplicate in multiple copies, industrial software development is not usually intended to mass-produce it. The industrial approach to software development aims at making this process orderly and ensure that the best quality software is created. Therefore, the above-mentioned process of transforming thoughts, ideas, concepts and ideas into ready-made software has been included in the engineering rigor, and not only programmers have become participants in this process. Contemporary programming development assumes that this process is carried out according to an orderly approach called methodology, and specialists with different competences, often completely non-programming, participate in it at various stages of production. However, it is still the key element to move from the description of the requirements for the software to the working code. And this is the programmer’s world, and here the programmer is essential. And although some processes can be automated, although some code can be duplicated and generated, it always comes to the point where the programmer’s intervention becomes necessary.

Even though the production of programming has now become a truly industrial process, seemingly killing individual creativity by crushing it into a formalized frameworks, creating innovative software is still a challenge for those who want to create. And the programming itself still has a space for self-expression through subtle algorithms, sophisticated data structures, and perfectly developed code. The newer and more sophisticated languages and tools are used for this, the larger this space can be. However, this must be learned, for example, at the IT studies at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Silesia.

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