Talking Tech
Posted on September 17, 2007
Filed Under Wile E. Coyote, weirdness, web 1.0 |
Since I took up building websites about six months ago or so, I’ve had a lot of conversations with programmers. They tend not to go well:
Me: Hi. I have a little problem that I don’t know how to solve. Please keep in mind that I have no programming knowledge. Here’s what I want to do…
Programmer: Why would you want to do that? All you have to do is to bebangle the dingus and don’t forget the dongle (this last is an actual word!).
Me: (after reading Bebangling for Dummies) Ok. Now I broke it. The screen just says General Terminal Fatal and Irrevocable Error.
Programmer: (silence)
Me: OK. I’ve deleted my old site, and I’m starting from scratch. How do I do this? I bebangled and everything and it still won’t work.
Another programmer: Why would you bebangle anything? You can just run a squirrel (I swear to God that’s what he said) and problem solved.
The fundamental problem, of course, is that programmers don’t speak English (not even the ones who do). They may be perfectly fluent while talking baseball or cars but, as soon as the conversation turns to their area of expertise, it’s like they were born hard-wired and have no memory of ever having to learn this stuff themselves. They have lost the ability to communicate with those who don’t already know the answers to the questions being asked.
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