Lucky for you, I’m going to explain the difference in a way that’s concise. To put it simply, coding is a very specific term that simply means writing down lines to make a machine perform operations. Programming, on the other hand, is an entire discipline that involves the use of analysis, algorithms, and best practices to flesh out the breadth of a program.
What Separates a Coder from a Programmer?
1. Education and Experience
Typically, programmers complete higher education that makes them very proficient at creating complex, efficient programs. Programmers may have experience studying operating systems, machine architecture, compilers, and everything that underlies how computer science actually works.
In this way, programmers are well suited to developing programs that minimize time and space complexity – if that jargon is unclear to you, don’t worry, we’ll discuss it later.
By contrast, coders are often junior developers who are just at the start of their career. Coders may cut and paste program segments or rely on library-defined functionality to complete tasks. Often, coders are proficient at making small programs yet introduce needless complexity into larger, more intricate tech tasks.
2. Minimizing Space and Time Complexity
Through in-depth education, programmers are able to implement the best strategy for solving problems. For every programmer, the ultimate goal is to minimize space and time complexity as much as possible.
Simply put, this means that the program performs operations quickly while using very little computer memory. By employing a specific algorithm, the programmer will be able to maximize their time savings based on the number of inputs received.
Often, coders aren’t too concerned about how graceful their program is since they’re more focused on getting it to work in the first place. Additionally, coders typically write smaller modules with much fewer “moving parts.”
For web development tasks, programmers are forced to pay attention to how they are using the system’s resources. Some websites constantly receive high traffic from visitors, which necessitates a program that’s able to handle very high workloads. In short, coders can afford to make mistakes, yet your Chase banking app should always perform correctly.
3. Program with Robustness
Robust program writing is a discipline that values error-driven development. Programmers often work with a QA team that throws every type of faulty user input, out of bounds error, and curveball at an intricate system.
This trial by fire approach is necessary for making a complex program as robust as possible. A robust program should be able to handle errors with grace.
Why is this important? Well, this model of development assumes clients are as incompetent as possible. By handling errors, a program can keep running without throwing out a massive error that results in a whole system failure.
When 911 shut down in the middle of South Dakota on a chilly day in October 2018, it caused thousands of calls to be rerouted and lost over the course of six hours. All of this was due to a simple program error: once the computer storing call logs ran out of memory, the entire system shut down. Dozens of deaths were attributed to this simple error.
No better example shows the importance of robust error handling. Often, coders work on simple tasks that don’t necessitate fully-fledged processes for diminishing error.
In this sense, programmers operate on a much tighter leash. We now occupy an era where bad programs make the difference between life and death.
4. The Importance of Planning Ahead
Typically, coders have a very vague idea of what they’d like their program to do while in development. This results in frequent large overhauls of obsolete program segments. During development, they may cull whole folders or classes that don’t fit into their projects.
Programmers are able to think at a much higher level about their program. Before ever writing a single line, programmers create visual outlines and clearly define the boundaries of the problem. They may work with others to craft a web development timeline or consider how best to write a program.
Through predicting as many errors as possible, programmers find themselves repeating program segments infrequently. Programmers may consider how to compile, debug, and implement their work in clearly defined stages of production.
5. Writing “DRY” Programs
In the Javascript world, DRY is an acronym that simply means: Don’t Repeat Yourself. In fact, this is the central maxim of all good computer science work.
When coders are first starting out, they constantly find themselves writing the same segment over and over. They may create different functions that do slightly different things, resulting in the added overhead of writing, testing, and needlessly complicating a simple program.
Programmers strive to make their program as DRY as possible through modularizing their work – after all, they’re tight on time in a speedy development environment. If programmers find they are repeating themselves, they place the repeated task in a single function that can be used over and over again. Additionally, functions and whole bodies of a program execute completely different types of work.
Programs that are modularized and written concisely have a low degree of bilateral interdependence, meaning that two functions don’t rely on each other to correctly compute something. Not only does this reduce tricky errors, but it also makes both functions more usable for a wider subset of tasks.
6. Development Environment Selection
Here’s a little known secret: the language you select may have an effect on a program’s performance. Programmers know how to select the right language for the task in order to execute an intricate project.
Meanwhile, coders are often only familiar or comfortable with a specific language. Additionally, coders may not understand the distinctions between the major camps of languages: object-oriented, functional, logic, and procedural.
Math or heavy logic work may be better suited by procedural programs, whereas web development tasks may necessitate a more object-oriented approach.
7. Readability
Programmers can either work alone or in concert with a whole team of developers, designers, and coders. No matter the environment, it’s vital for programmers to make their operations as readable as possible.
What does this mean? Essentially, programmers should be able to write something that they can immediately understand hours, weeks, or months later. Programmers include concise comments in the body of their program in order to make it as understandable as possible.
This is important because half of the discipline requires re-reading old code. If you’re working on a large project, you’re ultimately going to forget what a specific module you wrote actually does.
On the other hand, coders may write unclean program segments or create unintelligible variable names. This is a byproduct of cutting and pasting code segments from other programmers, resulting in a mish-mash of confusing lines.
The Verdict
Although they’re used interchangeably, the disciplines of simple code-writing versus program-writing are distinct in a number of ways. Programmers consistently think on a higher level, handle errors, work in teams, and focus on space and time complexity reduction.