Ask HN: What would you be if you weren't a programmer?

Re:Ask HN: What would you be if you weren't a programmer? by Mezzie on Saturday July 09, 2022 @10:37AM (#32035488)

Personally, as someone who prefers not to program as my sole job, it's hard to say since I learned in elementary school and not knowing about computers/programming would have meant I had a VERY different childhood.

As to the other question: In my observation the following areas have some overlap with a programmer's mindset:

- Legal: Particularly things like patent and copyright law.

- Technical writing, fact-checking, and scientific illustration

- Academia or labwork in chemistry or physics

- Chemical or electrical engineering

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Re:Ask HN: What would you be if you weren't a programmer? by muzani on Sunday July 10, 2022 @01:40AM (#32042157)

I've had some good ability with reading laws thanks to programming experience. But I'd say law is more about reading and interpreting rules, while programming is about writing rules based off existing ones. I dislike reading code, so I'd probably not enjoy being a lawyer.

Philosophy is a nice parallel. Paul Graham is notable for being both philosopher and programmer.

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Re:Ask HN: What would you be if you weren't a programmer? by Mezzie on Sunday July 10, 2022 @10:55AM (#32045326)

It depends on which area of law. My experience (not a lawyer, but did legal/civics communication for a couple of years) is that legal theory and constitutional law (or whatever the local equivalent is) would be the best match because a lot of that is basically arguing about systems design.

For someone who did like reading code, they would be more suited to patent or copyright law.

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