Today is 11/12/13. The last date of the century with three consecutive numbers. It’s also my birthday.
I don’t usually do resolutions. I don’t usually do oaths. Today I’m making an exception and taking A Programmer’s Oath – a Hippocratic-style pledge for people who build software, written by Dionysis Zindros.
Most of it is what you’d expect: respect the people who taught you, share what you learn, don’t claim expertise you don’t have, don’t use your power for unfair profit, keep learning.
The line that landed hardest:
I will not forget that programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
That’s the SICP line, restated. Abelson and Sussman wrote it in 1985 and I’ve been failing to internalize it ever since. Every time I reach for clever, every time I write the shorter version of a thing that would be clearer longer, every time I save three lines at the cost of five seconds of a reader’s future confusion – I am failing this sentence.
Taking an oath about it won’t fix that. But writing it down on a birthday, in public, in a place I can come back to, might help a little.
Happy birthday to me.