Lessons Life can learn from programming
I have over 15 years experience as a ‘programmer’. And One thing i have observed is that no matter how experienced you are in any programming language, you still make ‘mistakes’ — there is always a mis-spelt variable or missing comma or brace etc.
One of the deciding factors for which programming language to use for me has always been the friendliness of the error reporting. Most compilers or interpreters try to be as helpful as possible. Pointing out why and what caused the error, which file and which line the error is etc.
However in life most people are not so friendly to mistakes and errors; Our judiciary system does not have provision for second chance or corrections. Rather you get condemned, segregated and ostracised for the first and smallest of offence. As children, this culture is passed unto us in everyday life, when parents curse out in traffic and the smallest provocation, when schools send us to detention or send for our parents. When we get a zero or low grades because we do not ‘understand’ what was taught, etc
No software application will run if at the first error encountered you where not allowed to program anymore or if you had to start all over without even the opportunity to re-use the previous code. Even live applications and programs with billions of users are not always free of errors. Most deployment engines, platforms and compilers have options to reduce or completely hide errors . There are several modes of an application — debugging, testing, development, production, etc each handles and exposes errors differently.
In life it is difficult to find people who will come together to help you get over your struggles and mistakes, but in programming, communities and platforms exist to help and teach others — most times for free — to overcome the difficulties they encounter. sites like https://stackoverflow.com have millions of users who help both newbies and experts solve and overcome the programming challenges. http://quora.com helps people get answers to almost anything. But in real life the opposite occurs.
Life will be much more better and people will do much better if we like programmers understand that mistakes are not always fatal, and even fatal errors can be caught (confronted and addressed) and given an exception (forgiven) instead of bringing the whole program (life) to and end. If we learn when to reveal mistakes in private (debugging, testing) for correction and hide in public (production, live) errors — to avoid chaos, confusion and exposing their weaknesses to people who can exploit them. we can manage mistakes, errors and offences and still leave happy purposeful and fulfilled lives
Originally published at steemit.com on May 18, 2018.
