I don’t program, at best I script and I’ve made a reasonable career of this when called for by any of my jobs.  This Rube Goldberg-esque methodology is not helpful when learning to program with a capital “p”.   “Programming” seems to involve things like having “data flows” and in some case interaction with these dreaded “objects” I have heard so much about.  Whenever I create a new class I feel like I have a new structure that has to be bargained with, that is holding my data-children hostage that only through an intricate set of calls and handshakes may I actually see them.  This is the way “programmers” do things, and people far smarter than I have ordained this the way of the world.

I created my first “Hello, World” program in my target framework and have gone so far as to change both the point size and font of the text.  This isn’t even crawling, this isn’t even breathing.  This is the programming equivalent of the moment of silence where the baby is alive but has yet to be slapped into cognizances by the doctor.  Then the pain begins, and I get to become some sort of journeyman bit-wielder who will spend the next years hating pound signs and import calls but will miss them (dearly) when removed from that element.  I never felt this way about chemistry, as I considered each compound, extract, and experiment to be a friend.  The calcified laws of nature were perfectly content to merely repeat their one line of “a 10°C translates to a doubling of the rate of reaction” until you realized this truth and its manifold implications.  Programming has yet to introduce me to those friends with their quirks (crystallized iodine compounds make wonderful party tricks) and qualities (acetylene and chlorine react as gases to produce a color that I can only describe as “bright”) and I wonder if this happens in programming.  If it does not, I will petition for a change to the second word in “computer science”.