Changing paradigms from "programmer" to ... "multi-programmer"

The very first thought that hit my brain this morning ...

Yes, let's imagine this.

• Eyes open blearily.
• "What time is it?"
• *WHAP* stop thinking of time, girly man! i'm here to PUMP! YOU UP!
• "Wha... who are you!?"
• i am logi, thou fool, and I'm here to make sure you're fully awake by delivering this paid advertisement...
• "Arrrrgh!"
• can you say that again?
• "Arrrrgh!"
• Anyway... I thought you might like to know, now that you're awake....

As enterprise programmers, we don't "program" quite so much any more. What we do is write extension points for specific functionality in a program we use - in effect, instead of writing simple things (i.e., single-deployment-element programs, with few executable units), we write systems, fairly small units that leverage libraries to do stuff.

A web application with fifteen pages, then, instead of being "a program" is actually fifteen or so separate programs. (Hmm... fifteen workflows, instead of pages? Not sure offhand of the right term here.)

Thinking about it this way was fairly surprising for me. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before, but it explains why things can be so complex sometimes...

tags: j2ee  javaee  java  systems