What I do.

[bunn]

That meme got me thinking about the differences between what I do, and perceptions of what I do.

This quiz asks you fairly bluntly if you like Sums. I said 'no' (as I hate sums and have a go-slow on that part of my brain that deals with numbers) so I didn't get any of the computery type jobs suggested, (apart from designer, which is really Drawing, and doesn't count).

Website development and programming type stuff is percieved as a fairly sum-based discipline, which I don't think it is necessarily, or not the kind I do, anyway.

I think of it more as working out what people want, and how it might be easiest for them to get / do it, then explaining how to do it to computers using their language. Well, not their language, exactly, but a language that they have learnt and so have I*. Or perhaps as a sort of training: finding the triggers for the behaviours you want the machines to perform, and doing them in the right order...

Very rarely do I need to use my rather sad -2 to Sums Skill, and when I do, it's usually on marketing analysis type stuff rather than on 'making stuff work' type stuff. Not that I am a programmer really, but I do seem to write or adapt quite a lot of stuff that certainly has that sort of programming smell about it.

* possibly this explains the odd miscommunication...

Comments

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it used to be more Sums when computers were much simpler?

I think you are right.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think so too.