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Ask HN: When does writing scripts turn into being “programmer”

by zeroecco on 4/6/23, 11:54 PM with 3 comments

As an SRE who is constantly fixing software bugs, adding features to open-source software, and writing scripts in various programming languages, I often wonder: At what point does my scripting work transform into full-blown programming work? What else is necessary to make the leap?

  • by flamesofphx on 4/7/23, 12:02 AM

    Highly dependant on who you ask...

    For some printing your first "Hello World" program qualifies you.. get that to be output on a webpage with a set of <h1> & <center> tags, you become full stack...

    For other(s) though you could write an even more feature rich and faster version of ZFS filesystem, and they would still not consider you a programmer.

  • by bediger4000 on 4/7/23, 12:37 AM

    Empirically, at about 150 lines. That seems true for sh, PHP, Python and Perl.

    Edit: somewhat fewer lines for Tcl/Tk for some reason.

  • by sargstuff on 4/7/23, 12:02 AM

    Transcribing steps or developing/implementing steps?