David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

And I'm more of a writing person than I am of a math person.

Yes.

That's actually exactly right.

So I did actually a keynote at RailsConf 10 years ago where I called myself a software writer.

I mean, I'm not the first person to say that.

Software writer has been in the vernacular for a long time.

But the modern...

identity that most programmers adopt when they're trying to be serious is software engineer.

And I reject that label.

I'm not an engineer.

Occasionally I dabble in some engineering, but the vast majority of the time I'm a software writer.

I write software for human consumption and for my own delight.

Mm-hmm.

I can get away with that because I'm working in a high-level language like Ruby, working on collaboration software and to-do lists and all the other stuff.

Again, if I was trying to apply my talent to writing 3D game engines, no, that's not the right mindset.

That's not the right identity.

But I find that the software engineering identity flattens things a little bit.

I'd like to think that we have software writers and software mathematicians, for example.

And then those are actually richer ways of describing the abstraction level that you're working at than engineer.

I actually wish that AI had a bit higher standards for writing.