this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
33 points (88.4% liked)
Programming
28739 readers
457 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In the end, programming is commanding a computer system to do your bidding. If your goal is to make electronic metal music, or complex 3d designs, simulate fluid dynamics, or solve for wheel settings on the Enigma machine, those are all programming tasks. Some may involve long runtimes, but the programming is giving the instructions to execute.
Even formulas in Excel are programming. But make no mistake that programming and software engineering are very different tasks: the latter is about devising good designs that balance countervailing interests. Software engineers define the problem which programmers would command onto a computer to find a solution or produce a product.