Then
When I got my first programming job, way back in 1987, it was a quite a private and solitary occupation. The Design Authority for my project gave me a detailed design for a procedure, including explicit definitions of the interfaces that I would use to interact with the rest of the system. I would then write the code for the procedure, test it locally and check it into version control. If I didn't need any clarification, I wouldn't speak to anyone as part of this process. I'd chat to my colleagues that I shared an office with, but in terms of doing my work it would be me and a screen.
My code wouldn't be looked at by anyone else unless there was an issue when the next build took place, which there always was, as there were hundreds of new procedures that had never been slammed together before. The build team would take the first stab at fixing the issues, and if they were successful then I wouldn't know anything about this. If they were unsuccessful we would then enter a period of confusion as they typically wanted help with their fix rather than the underlying problem, and I would wonder where this code they were talking about had come from.
My working life was spent solving problems that others were probably spending time solving, but it would never have occurred to me to share information about what I was doing, nor would I have had the first clue about how to go about sharing it.
Outside of work, I would almost never talk to anyone about programming unless I was catching up with someone I'd been at college with, but it would be very superficial and typically about which languages and business areas we were working in, before getting down to the serious business of talking about sport. I'd also rarely do any programming outside of work. I might fiddle around a bit with some Basic, Pascal or 6502 assembler on my BBC Model B, but nothing serious. And certainly nothing that I'd consider telling anyone else about. Some people wrote games and sent the source into magazines that might print it, but as a professional programmer I already got paid to write code so didn't need this outlet.
Programming was a job like any other - I went to an office, worked there for a set number of hours a day, then went home and did whatever else I was interested in at the time. Unless you were a close friend or family member, you wouldn't have known that I programmed computers for a living, and unless you were a programmer yourself, it was hard for me to communicate exactly what I did every day.
The stereotype of a programmer was someone sitting in a darkened basement, being fed written requirements, and spending their days staring at a screen and typing. Which was pretty accurate.
Now
Programming in 2021 has changed beyond all recognition. It's now a collaborative and very public occupation. Requirements are rarely written down, and if they are it is often the programmers doing that after speaking to "the business" to find out exactly what is needed. Outside of integrating with external systems, integrating with the rest of the code in the project involves collaboration with the other programmers and the interfaces change when it becomes apparent they need to. Code is reviewed before being added to version control and continuous integration flags up problems as soon as they occur. The idea that a team of humans would need to kick off a build and triage the problems seems quaint and incredibly inefficient now.
For me, the biggest change is that programmers expect, and are expected, to have a public profile.
When we solve a problem, we write a blog post about it, redacting any detail that might expose which customer this impacted. We cross post on Substack and Medium. There might be a Github repository with the sample code for the blog post - there will almost certainly be other Github repositories to showcase our work, sometimes complete applications that anyone is welcome to copy.
We also perform for audiences now, as we share what we've been doing at meet ups, conferences (both community and vendor organised), podcasts, webinars and recorded sessions. I'm pretty sure for the first 5-10 years of my career I didn't even show a customer what I'd built for them, it just got rolled into demos and training carried out by others. Now I show complete strangers from around the world and it seems perfectly normal.
Which is Better?
From the point of view of solving problems and producing solutions, it's almost unrecognisable now. If you hit a problem with anything other than bleeding edge technology, it's incredibly likely that someone else has already hit it and fixed it. And blogged about the fix. And spoken at a conference about it. And maybe created a Github repository with all the code you could possibly need going forward.
The flip side is that programming is now more of a lifestyle choice than a job. There is an expectation that you will be working on side projects, writing posts and presenting at conferences. Often this will be on top of your actual job, which means that your social life is merely an extension of your professional life and often indistinguishable. Going to the office and working a set number of hours is typically only part of the programmer life these days, which can bring a lot of pressure, especially if you don't see it as a calling. It can also be a full time job keeping up with the latest developments - frameworks rise and fall, platforms come in and out of favour, or the baddies get a new CEO and become the goodies so you grudgingly have to skill up on their products.
Personally I find it a lot better now that it was when I started, but very I'm lucky in that (a) I enjoy what I do, and (b) I can dedicate large chunks of my own time to all the extra-curricular activities without making my personal life difficult. I'm sure nobody wants to go back to the days when the helpful information was silo'd or didn't exist, but I'd imagine there are some out there who would quite like a return to the days when programming was something you did in private.
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