Skip to main content

Citizen Coder

The idea of bringing coding to the masses (citizen coders as some might call them) has been around for a long time. There were attempts to make this happen in fits and starts since I entered the workforce. Seemed like a good idea back then and in many ways still does. The type of person it would benefit the most would be one who can think and frame a problem for the AI like a programmer but for whatever reason does not or cannot code. Maybe they used to code once but don't anymore. I can see such a user being able to get value out of the system. The value for the active coder has been cited in the post though developers I speak with tell me the value statements in the media a bit overstated. 

They tend to use it to generate sample code snippets to understand how some language or library they are unfamiliar with works. Once they get a hang of it, they do their own thing because really distilling what they need to get done takes a lot more effort than doing it themselves. For someone who codes for a living, coding is not the big lift - thinking through the solution design that will work consistently is much more painstaking. The true citizen coder is one who cannot think like a programmer, has never been one and does not even have any related educational background. Such a person can have very worthwhile, creative and game-changing ideas. Today they would it challenging even to explain what they have in mind in a way that a coder can take action. Much is lost in translation. The real trick is to take what the citizen coders have in mind and convert that to a viable application in a seamless but interactive way. That is definitely a problem worth solving and we are not quite there yet. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Reading Shantaram

I finished listening to Shantaram on audiobook after several weekends of being absorbed in the story. This book had been on my to-read list for a long time and I am glad I chose the audio version of it. It is an extraordinary story teeming with colorful characters and rich detail. As an Indian who is a stranger to Mumbai and Maharashtra in that I have never spent years of my life there. I have to rely on what I know second hand. As a fan Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, where in my mind I imagined the action taking place in Mumbai, this book was a chance for me to know the city through another author even if an Australian.  The author,  Gregory David Roberts comes across as someone who is able to see the soul of India through all that ails it. And in connecting with that soul, he finds some answers to his life's hard questions. India does not save him but it keeps his soul alive and striving. Most of his experiences would be unrelatable to the average person who lives a far m...
Post a Comment
Read more