Coding or Programming?

[jasonwj322a]

Is there a difference? If so what do they do? 

[cj09beira]

To know  the difference we have to ask someone with a masters degree on urban dictionary ;-).

We need a reliable source for this.

My opinion is that if there are diferences they are probably really small .

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

There's no difference in practicality. "Coding" if used in a pejorative sense could be short hand for the action done by a  "code monkey", or someone who thinks they're a developer even though all they did was type in an example code from a textbook.

[Zonus]

I'd say that coding would mainly refer to people first starting out, that are just writing basic lines or if-then commands. Programming, I feel, covers the slightly more experience people that kinda know what they're doing by now.

[LogicalDrm]

In my mind there's slight difference. Programming can be both making programs and changing settings on some device to make it do different tasks. Coding would be just creating software by using code.

[jasonwj322a]

12 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

In my mind there's slight difference. Programming can be both making programs and changing settings on some device to make it do different tasks. Coding would be just creating software by using code.

 

31 minutes ago, Zonus said:

I'd say that coding would mainly refer to people first starting out, that are just writing basic lines or if-then commands. Programming, I feel, covers the slightly more experience people that kinda know what they're doing by now.

 

37 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

There's no difference in practicality. "Coding" if used in a pejorative sense could be short hand for the action done by a  "code monkey", or someone who thinks they're a developer even though all they did was type in an example code from a textbook.

Would programming cover coding? I want to get into these sort of fields but don't know what to call them or where to start.

[frostburg]

6 minutes ago, jasonwj322a said:

 

 

Would programming cover coding? I want to get into these sort of fields but don't know what to call them or where to start.

People will tell you that you don't need advanced math, but actually you do need advanced math for most interesting things, so you can start with that if you need to. Knuth's Concrete Mathematics is a good overview of what you need for most "general computer science" usage, specific fields might need other material. I would also suggest understanding calculus and linear algebra.

Yes, if you want to deal with the issue in a pedantic way, coding is a (very) specific subset of programming, but in common parlance there isn't a significant difference ("coder" is still less dignified, but my professors would sneer at "programmer", too).

[jasonwj322a]

4 minutes ago, frostburg said:

People will tell you that you don't need advanced math, but actually you do need advanced math for most interesting things, so you can start with that if you need to. Knuth's Concrete Mathematics is a good overview of what you need for most "general computer science" usage, specific fields might need other material. I would also suggest understanding calculus and linear algebra.

Yes, if you want to deal with the issue in a pedantic way, coding is a (very) specific subset of programming, but in common parlance there isn't a significant difference ("coder" is still less dignified, but my professors would sneer at "programmer", too).

Coding/Programming needs math?!? Really surprising. I thought you just typed in words....

[frostburg]

1 minute ago, jasonwj322a said:

Coding/Programming needs math?!? Really surprising. I thought you just typed in words....

Err, assuming that this is a question in good faith: a theorem is also a sequence of words. A computer program is equivalent to a proof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry–Howard_correspondence but this stuff gets pretty hard pretty fast, so don't get scared if you can't understand anything there).

Most of what you might want a computer to do involves math, for example graphics programming is heavily based on linear algebra.

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, frostburg said:

People will tell you that you don't need advanced math, but actually you do need advanced math for most interesting things, so you can start with that if you need to. Knuth's Concrete Mathematics is a good overview of what you need for most "general computer science" usage, specific fields might need other material. I would also suggest understanding calculus and linear algebra.

Yes, if you want to deal with the issue in a pedantic way, coding is a (very) specific subset of programming, but in common parlance there isn't a significant difference ("coder" is still less dignified, but my professors would sneer at "programmer", too).

It depends on what you're doing though. Computer science isn't strictly speaking about programming computers. It's about coming up with algorithms and analyzing the feasibility of them. Computers just makes the task more easy.

 

I've been a software developer for many years and I've yet to touch calculus, linear algebra, or any college level math.

[christianled59]

5 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It depends on what you're doing though. Computer science isn't strictly speaking about programming computers. It's about coming up with algorithms and analyzing the feasibility of them. Computers just makes the task more easy.

 

I've been a software developer for many years and I've yet to touch calculus, linear algebra, or any college level math.

Same here. The most complicated math I've had to use was high school trigonometry. Although I can forsee many instances where having understanding of basic calculus to be handy. For example, a program that does advanced market analysis predictions. 

[frostburg]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It depends on what you're doing though. Computer science isn't strictly speaking about programming computers. It's about coming up with algorithms and analyzing the feasibility of them. Computers just makes the task more easy.

 

I've been a software developer for many years and I've yet to touch calculus, linear algebra, or any college level math.

Sure, it's possible in certain fields, but how are you going to write, for example, a Monte Carlo solver for an optimization problem or a ray-tracer without math?

I wouldn't encourage someone to delve into the syntax of a programming language without understanding what is actually being done, that's how you get bad programmers.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, frostburg said:

Sure, it's possible in certain fields, but how are you going to write, for example, a Monte Carlo solver for an optimization problem or a ray-tracer without math?

I wouldn't encourage someone to delve into the syntax of a programming language without understanding what is actually being done, that's how you get bad programmers.

Why would I need any of those to determine if a key was pressed?

[Hal_9000]

I always thought coding was the act of the typing of the code and programming was the act of creating the code and working through the algorithms on a white board then typing it out and working out any bugs. 

[frostburg]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Why would I need any of those to determine if a key was pressed?

You're actually being a client programmer to people that wrote device drivers, IPC protocols, schedulers, system libraries, etc. when you do that without knowing math. Those people did, mostly. Well, maybe not the device drivers ones.

[christianled59]

I mean, you can program a robot without using any code. Programming, in my sense of the word, is making something compatible with some sort of input or to create an action. Coding, is... well.. coding? You write the code.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, frostburg said:

You're actually being a client programmer to people that wrote device drivers, IPC protocols, schedulers, system libraries, etc. when you do that without knowing math. Those people did, mostly. Well, maybe not the device drivers ones.

The last time I wrote a program that made that determination was on a bare metal system where I had to write the BSP and come up with the timing for whatever it was I was doing. None of it required the math you speak of.

 

Programming is a broad subject. Trying to categorize and make it sound like certain aspects are lesser than others is detrimental to a prospective developer.

[frostburg]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The last time I wrote a program that made that determination was on a bare metal system where I had to write the BSP and come up with the timing for whatever it was I was doing. None of it required the math you speak of.

 

Programming is a broad subject. Trying to categorize and make it sound like certain aspects are lesser than others is detrimental to a prospective developer.

There is nothing bad in being a client programmer to x. Basically everyone is in some way, it's not like you need to reinvent the wheel each time for no reason, but it's useful to have some understanding about how the wheel was made in the first place (this means understanding computer architecture) and why it was made that way (this generally involves math even if your current application doesn't). 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, frostburg said:

There is nothing bad in being a client programmer to x. Basically everyone is in some way, it's not like you need to reinvent the wheel each time for no reason, but it's useful to have some understanding about how the wheel was made in the first place (this means understanding computer architecture) and why it was made that why (this generally involves math even if your current application doesn't). 

... You know there's no such thing as "client programmer"? There's client-side software, but there's no such thing as a "client programmer."

 

Point still stands, you do not need college level math to understand the basics of computers. Now if you're trying to squeeze the most performance out of them, then sure. That's what computer science does. But you do not need to know calculus to understand how NOT, OR, AND, and XOR work.

[frostburg]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

... You know there's no such thing as "client programmer"? There's client-side software, but there's no such thing as a "client programmer."

 

Point still stands, you do not need college level math to understand the basics of computers. Now if you're trying to squeeze the most performance out of them, then sure. That's what computer science does. But you do not need to know calculus to understand how NOT, OR, AND, and XOR work.

Oh, to clarify, by definition the client programmer is the one that uses a library, relative the one that writes the library (as in "we're going to expose this functionality to the client programmer" or "the client programmer needs to be careful when extending class x since..."). Client-side means a completely different thing, as you know.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, frostburg said:

Oh, to clarify, by definition the client programmer is the one that uses a library, relative the one that writes the library (as in "we're going to expose this functionality to the client programmer" or "the client programmer needs to be careful when extending class x since..."). Client-side means a completely different thing, as you know.

There's no formal definition of that term used anywhere academically. All of the searches I've found strictly refer to "client" as a client-side application.

 

I mean, feel free to provide a source.

[Castdeath97]

Well, here is how I see it:

 

HTML is not a programming language, so you can't program in HTML but you code it.

However, let's say you write C++ code, you are coding and programming, since C++ is a programming language.

 

So, all programming is coding but not all coding is programming.

[frostburg]

12 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

There's no formal definition of that term used anywhere academically. All of the searches I've found strictly refer to "client" as a client-side application.

 

I mean, feel free to provide a source.

This might be a language-barrier issue. Feel free to consider every time I said "client programmer" in this thread as meaning "programmer that is extending or relying on a library" (which is almost everyone).

 

Concerning NOT, OR, AND, XOR, would you consider knowing how to simplify a boolean expression as necessary math knowledge? Karnaugh maps, for example. More broadly, I think that the issue is: if you don't know maths, can you even know when you don't need to optimize and when you do?

[commandlion]

To me, ignoring the obvious difference between a noun and a noun conjugate of a verb, I think the difference is intent. Someone who codes can be anyone who wants to better utilize the full power of their computer or automate something repetitive or anything else you can do with code. A programmer is someone who writes code professionally.

[commandlion]

24 minutes ago, frostburg said:

programmer that is extending or relying on a library

Dude, everyone relies on some library at some point when they code. Unless you're writing pure assembly, every language has a standard library, every OS/platform has an API. Why make that distinction?