Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

How to write a computer program when you have no idea how to do it in a new language.

I wrote a computer program this week at work. (oooops, I am supposed to write that I was developing because that is what the job recruiters call it nowadays.) This shouldn’t sound remarkable, but I’m not supposed to write computer programs AND I’m supposed to be so old that I forgot how to do that years ago…so let’s keep that part of the story quiet.

Anyways, how do you write a computer program in the 21st century when you’ve never used the only language available to you? Simple, you Google it.

Yes, that’s it. Go to Google and type something like, “powershell csv read write.” Try to read the answers shown (they were written in blurbs by programmers—ooops slipped again, developers not programmers—developers who had other things to develop), copy, paste, run, and that’s it.

I guess having some background developing helps, but really. Just ask a question and copy the answer. The profession has devolved a bit.