Over the years of working in tech, I have noticed a pattern: certain technologies, languages, procedures, whatever, tend to make sense instantly and permanently to me. Other things, even if I work with them for months or years, never feel quite right. The latter leave me feeling less than intelligent.

I’ve also noticed that the types of things that tend to make sense to me tend to make sense to fellow Cloud Four-ian John. Not 100%, but it led me to wonder if certain patterns of thinking (I hope it’s OK to say that I think that some parts of my brain are wired like John’s) cause certain technologies to make sense and others to baffle.

Here is my distribution:

Inherently Makes Sense

• Object-oriented programming
• SQL/relational databases
• DOM and JQuery/good JavaScript frameworks
• PHP (sorry, but it’s so obvious and easy)
• Python (coding/reading)
• WordPress (as a PHP framework example)
• AJAX-y stuff

Gives me Grief

• CVS (please just kill me now; maybe it’s just the complexity of the specific CVS situations I’ve faced)
• Zope (the way it’s pieced together from bits of Python, bits of object DB, other stuff)
• Python (finding documentation and modules)
• Drupal (Something about the complexity of doing custom things)
• DNS (Thankfully no longer My Problem)
• SSH Keys
• XML parsing, also SOAP (”Simple”, my ass*)

I am not implying that the stuff I have trouble with is bad or hard, nor that I cannot do it at all–it just confounds or frustrates me consistently. Something about my perception of those items, my conceptions.

Does everyone have lists like this or do most techies just kind of “get” everything?

* Ha ha ha: Wikipedia: “SOAP once stood for ‘Simple Object Access Protocol’ but this acronym was dropped with Version 1.2 of the standard, as it was considered to be misleading” (laughing all the way to the “oh shit I have to use SOAP in my next project”)

Tags: engineering, programming, web, work

I took, like, at least three linguistics classes in college in the 1990’s, so I’m a dangerous and ignorant, but curious, dilettante.

I remember learning something about people who are multi-lingual, that they store rules and vocabulary for each language in completely separate “pockets” of the brain. This keeps people from switching between languages mid-sentence–uncontrollably, at least, not the intentional English/Dutch back-and-forth DJs seem to do a lot–or lapsing into binary like that awesome SNL skit of Bill Gates that one time.

Which makes me think. Does learning a programming “language” follow neurologically in any of the same footsteps? Do we process statements in scripts like we read? I at least like to think so, as it would help explain why I like syntaxes (or syntices, if you like the archaic, thoughtful form of the word) like jQuery and hate to have to deal with perl.

I often have to deal with as many as half a dozen languages or contexts per day in my world of Web. Today I am jumping from python to JavaScript with punctuation moments of PHP, and irritants like dtml (don’t ask if you don’t know it) and CSS (CSS rocks, I just am not that polished at it these days), and of course HTML, etc.. I stumble with the occasional misplaced bracket or semicolon or dollar sign, but not nearly as often as you’d think. Are we pre-programmed to switch easily like this?

Tags: linguistics, programming, web