“Programming is mostly thinking” is one of these things we tell ourselves like it is some deep truth but it’s the most unproductive of observations.
Programming is thinking in the same exact way all knowledge work is thinking:
- Design in all it’s forms is mostly thinking
- Accounting is mostly thinking
- Management in general is mostly thinking
The meaningful difference is not the thinking, it’s what are you thinking about.
Your manager needs to “debug” people-problems, so they need lots of time with people (i.e. meetings).
You are debugging computer problems, so you need lots of time with your computer.
There’s an obvious tension there and none of the extremes work, you (and your manager) need to find a way to balance both of your workloads to minimize stepping on each others toes, just like with any other coworker.
The article isn't for programmers, it's for non-programmers (like management) who think it is mostly typing, and describing what's going on when we're not typing.
It's not nearly as unproductive as my old PhD college professor who went on and on about the amount of time you lose per day moving your hand off your keyboard when you could be memorizing shortcuts and macros instead of working
An important difference is that in programming, it is often better to do the same thing with less code (result).
I don't mean producing cryptic code-golf-style code, but the aspect that all the stuff you produce you have to maintain. This is certainly different from a novel author who doesn't care so much about maintenance and is probably more concerned about the emotions that his text is producing.
Programming is thinking in the same exact way all knowledge work is thinking:
- Design in all it’s forms is mostly thinking
- Accounting is mostly thinking
- Management in general is mostly thinking
The meaningful difference is not the thinking, it’s what are you thinking about.
Your manager needs to “debug” people-problems, so they need lots of time with people (i.e. meetings).
You are debugging computer problems, so you need lots of time with your computer.
There’s an obvious tension there and none of the extremes work, you (and your manager) need to find a way to balance both of your workloads to minimize stepping on each others toes, just like with any other coworker.