Code-ing
The bad vibes of “coding“
I remember the first time I heard the term “coding”. It was early 2002, and I had recently relocated to the UK. It was in the aftermath of the dot-com crash, and I had left a startup where I led software development with a comfortable sum of money, intending to spend the next couple of years enjoying life (partially successful, and not for lack of trying), learning more and improving my skills as a hacker by drinking from the internet‘s firehose and contributing to open-source (with great success), and reading for an undergraduate degree in linguistics (abortive).
Although I wasn’t too stressed about finding a job, and understanding that demand is extremely constrained, I thought it wise to apply anyway just to stay in the game. At the time, having already spent several years as a software professional, I was familiar with the term “programmer”, which I liked, but had become somewhat anachronistic, “software developer”, which I deeply disliked on aesthetic reasons, even while recognising how it attempted to convey the broader scope beyond just writing code, and “hacker”, which I liked best and had the strongest identification with (still do), but was destined to be forever an insider term, overloaded for the general public with negative connotations.
One day, I came across an ad for a software developer position at an ed-tech company on a local job board. I applied and was soon invited for an interview. The interview was conducted by two young people, a woman and a man. By young I mean about my age, or perhaps a bit older. I used to be young. It began with a multiple-choice test from a Microsoft booklet. I completed it quickly and easily, realising that they likely administered it because they didn’t know how else to assess my technical skills.
After confirming that I had answered everything correctly, we moved on to the conversational part of the interview, which was … awkward (and I‘m sure I share part of the responsibility for that). It quickly became clear that the interviewers didn’t really know what to ask me. To help them out and move things along, I thought I’d try asking them a question: what is it they’re looking for in the hire for this position? I hoped to overcome the awkward silence, but also to give myself an opportunity to impress them with my diverse set of skills, that reach beyond merely programming to architecting systems, scaling them, and managing their development.
One interviewer responded confidently, “Oh, we’re looking for a coder. We’re just looking for someone to do some coding.” The second interviewer immediately agreed, adding that they were also interested in experimenting with LYE-NOOX. I probably didn’t verbalise my dismay, but I suspect my facial expression made it clear I did not enjoy the conversation. I never heard back from them.
On the bus ride home, I reflected on this strange new term I have just heard - “coder”, “coding” - and concluded it was an outsider term, used by those who didn’t really understand what people like me did. Perhaps they thought coding was more cryptic or mysterious than it actually was, and the term felt diminutive or even slightly derogatory. I didn’t like it.
It would be several more months before I found another job, but the wait turned out to be worth it. I didn’t know it at the time, but my real career as a hacker was just about to begin.
Spring 2025
I never got used to the term “coding”, and thankfully, it was not in common use by the people I interact with most often. It is now on a surge, as part of the popular phrase “vibe coding”. Ironically, it is being used to describe the activity of not writing code.
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