Theta Code

In a policy letter of September 18, 1967 titled “COMPLEXITY AND CONFRONTING”, L. Ron Hubbard states:

To the degree that a being cannot confront, he enters substitutes which, accumulating, bring about a complexity.

The definition of “confront” being used there is a Scientology definition: “to face without flinching or avoiding” (that’s from the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary).

This is the no-holds-barred, fundamental explanation for why some programmers cannot produce simple systems. This is the underlying difference between the great programmer and the terrible programmer–the degree to which he can confront.

But what is it that these terrible programmers are not confronting that leads to these convoluted, awful systems that we all live with? At first, you might think that it’s the computer, the keyboard, the monitor–the simple, obvious things that are right in front of them. But all the programmers I know have no trouble confronting those things. In fact, many programmers are most comfortable facing a computer, and don’t avoid it in the least. And as L. Ron Hubbard says, people enter substitutes for things that they can’t confront, and programmers don’t substitute other things for their computer. In fact, they’re more likely to use their computer itself as a substitute for other things that they couldn’t confront.

So what are the things that many or most programmers can’t confront, that they enter substitutes for? (Read More…)