Theta Code

In Handbook For Preclears*, L. Ron Hubbard writes:

Man is successful. That is evident because he is here today after eons of trial and error, good and bad planning. And he is successful because he can change.

Now, you really should read that whole chapter (Chapter One in the book) for the complete context of the quote. It’s actually quite a beautiful and inspiring chapter–well worth reading. But that quote is enough for what I want to talk about today.

Those of you who read my main tech blog know that I talk a lot about change, so this quote from L. Ron Hubbard made me smile when I read it.

What do our software systems do? They change. The environment changes, requirements change–things change. It’s our ability to change our software effectively that largely determines whether we are good or bad programmers. It’s not our ability to construct a system that “works”–although that’s certainly important. No, what distinguishes the great programmer from the mediocre programmer is that the great programmer writes systems that can be changed.

Granted, just being able to construct a working system can be quite a challenge! When you’re a brand-new programmer, that’s what takes up most of the time–learning the language, figuring out how to do things, just making things work. That’s completely understandable if you’re a new programmer, or if you’re new to some language or technology. But once you’ve got a handle on that, it should quickly (or slowly) become apparent that there’s going to be a future to your code, and that means that you’re going to be changing it. If you didn’t plan for change, that’s going to be tough.

What do I mean by “plan for change?” Well, just have the idea, when you’re writing the code, “this might have to change some day,” and think, “what would keep this flexible, while still keeping it simple?” Sometimes that takes learning more about software design, but it’s always well worth it. The more you program, the better you’ll get at it. Just have “changeability” as a goal, and as you become a better and better programmer, your code will become easier and easier to change. It only becomes a problem if you never even care about it, and just spend the rest of your days as a programmer building spaghetti code that “works” but can never be fixed or changed when needed.

And as a note very related to this, never let anybody tell you, “If you’re not coding, you’re not working!” No! Planning, designing, refactoring, and even a bit of scribbling thoughts on paper are all extremely valuable uses of your time, and should not be neglected. Those are a large part of what help you cope with change. Programming isn’t all typing–it’s a bit of observing, thinking, and talking, too.

-Max

* A preclear is the most commonly-used term for a person receiving Scientology counseling. The term “preclear” is used because the person is on the way to being a Clear.

In a series of lectures called the Philadelphia Doctorate Course, L. Ron Hubbard says:

All of your work…is motivated by the future, not motivated by the past: you want to eat tomorrow, why, you work today.

That’s from the seventh lecture in the series, on December 2, 1952, for those who are curious.

So why program? Are we doing it because the boss tells us to? Maybe we’re doing it to eat tomorrow and pay our rent and buy nice things for ourselves. I think a lot of programmers are doing that, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I mean, it sounds a little unpleasant–working so you can live, while spending most of life at work–but it’s not evil or wrong or something like that. But in addition to all that, aren’t there some people who might take a little pride in their work? Maybe there’s something in the future that we’re working toward–a completed product, a happy user, a piece of software that helps people–something.

Well, that means our software must have a future. And we’re creating that future, right now. In fact, you could go so far as to say that everything we do to the software in present time is somehow motivated by the future. It might be the future five minutes from now, or it might be two years from now. It doesn’t matter how far into the future we’re talking about, it’s just clear that it’s the future that motivates the tremendous amount of thought and effort that we put in to our systems.

We write code now so that we have a working system tomorrow. We put effort into the system now so that it can save us effort in the future. We work on our software architecture so that we don’t have to continually fix our software in the future.

It’s very easy to think of a system as “a series of decisions made in the past that led up to what we have now.” But who cares, because our work now isn’t motivated by a desire to affect the past–you can’t affect the past, that’s a pretty fundamental law of this universe.

You are the programmer, you are the cause of the system right now, and that cause is motivated by the future, one way or another.

-Max