A little bit more than half a year ago I took a job and that’s why I wasn’t posting here. It’s been a long journey, - I learned many new programming and data wrangling techniques, almost started programming in node.js (not yet as of Today :) ) and in course of executing tons of relatively small and seemingly simple tasks in… like, probably, a dosen of different services I started feeling that they all fit into a certain pattern of thought… or, maybe, a dream that many people would collectively want to come true - the proverbial ‘Programming without programming’.

How it all began…

    Once upon a time, when pigs drank wine and monkeys chewed tobacco… the dreamer of the day envisioned the future full of ‘automation’ and the idle men and women lounging in the midst of it. Don’t laugh, I saw the promo sci-fi enactment from the 50-s on CSPAN, filmed by a mega-corporation… it probably was GE. Of course these people will not be doing any “coding” or something like that! They are lounging with their ladies and subsequent kids! At most they will be giving orders in this tone of voice specially designated for talking with help. And, by the way, there was no ‘programming’ per se at the time too. :)

The Windows and Gates.

    And here comes Bill Gates and instead of opening the gates (of progress) starts crafting windows through which people will be just peeking (if they pay enough) instead of acting within the new environment full of data and ways to transform it. Of course you need to ‘entertain’ your captive crowd of peepers with something that is not really serious, but seems to be really important for the ‘productivity’. Basically, it will not help your work in any real way, but you will think that some day it will and that’s why you will pay the price and agree with the ‘s…tware’ End User License Agreement that states that it (the software that you are paying for) has “…NO…FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE” (the wording is for the current versions, in the past it was ‘no particular use’, basically, useless :) , but expensive).
    And that’s how the wonderful idea of ‘Programming without programming’ came to life.

Mama mia, here we go again…

    After some time it boiled down to some messy data wrangling within a CRM system and for the first time in maybe a couple of decades I had to deal again with the so called ‘programming wihout programming’. It is a euphimism for you doing all the job of creating a system that you need out of bits and pieces put in an expensive toolbox for you by a craftsy (and enterpreneurial) bunch of ‘programmers’.
The logic of this funny affair is very simple: “You - they say to you - need a system that would match your needs exactly, don’t you? See! This means that you need an ‘extra flexible’ system, that can be turned into just about anything. Your business is unique, we understand that. Now. Here’s your framework, the wheels are in that corner on the right, the engine is in that big room behind the small door, see? Yes, you can squeeze yourself through it, we tried. Here’s a 100 page manual how to loose enough weight so that you will be able to. Don’t step on that rear fender! It will be not simple to make it assume its initial shape! By the way, did you get the invoice for the past five minutes of this converstation? No? We will email it to you within the next ten seconds.” And all things like that…

And there comes a moment, typically after manually delining a couple of hundred records that you’ve just uploaded in 10 seconds because you clicked the wrong microscopic button invented by a ‘graphic designer’ because ‘he thinks it looks cool’… by clicking each of these items three times
And you start thinking to yourself:”Maybe programming routine tasks was not such a hassle after all…?”
And then you start writing programms using the API. Don’t relax, you are just half the way there!

Application programming interfaces.

    Now you in the territory of not just ‘programmers’ but a separate caste that s…ts on everybody else, the ‘connectors’. They seriously think that the idiotic slang with ugly unpronounceable words and mostly useless multistage protocols of interactions between ‘parties’ none of which is interested in another one succeeding… must be known by anybody who steps on their turf. Moreover, they assume that you are ‘one of them’ and you have professionally installed and maintained servers at your immediate disposal and can work for days ‘implementing’ your side of the interaction as if you have nothing else to do in your life.

Later