I think my younger self’s quip was indirectly a reference to Wall’s list of virtues. That said, it’s ambiguous (to me) whether working to avoid work satisfies the first cited definition. It’s simultaneously lazy and non-lazy.
Of course that dichotomy is applied frequently in programming. It could easily be described as “redefining the problem”.
But in my early programming experience it was trading time dedicated to education and hacking in exchange for avoiding manual effort. I learned to programmatically access MP3 metadata so I could update my blog when I posted new songs I recorded, rather than typing out the information directly. That’s literally why I became a programmer, because I got tired of typing some stuff twice (as I had already typed it in iTunes when converting to MP3).
That certainly feels more like what I colloquially understand laziness to mean, than the cleverer reinterpretation used by Wall to describe what I understand as work substitution in programming as a non-novice.
It takes willpower to do something different and raise above the “operational”/“manual typing” level; I can’t see how that’s laziness. Long-term thinking isn’t associated with “laziness” either afaik.
Fixing problems through programming is all about thinking, not typing. If you try to fix something merely by typing, you’re avoiding the main work we’re supposed to do. Otherwise, why even have computers?
This is 99% my point, the only difference I was trying to introduce was that in my initial foray into programming I wasn’t actually a programmer. I didn’t have those insights. I was actually just learning how to make machines let me type less. I had no idea what that impulse would open up for me.
Of course that dichotomy is applied frequently in programming. It could easily be described as “redefining the problem”.
But in my early programming experience it was trading time dedicated to education and hacking in exchange for avoiding manual effort. I learned to programmatically access MP3 metadata so I could update my blog when I posted new songs I recorded, rather than typing out the information directly. That’s literally why I became a programmer, because I got tired of typing some stuff twice (as I had already typed it in iTunes when converting to MP3).
That certainly feels more like what I colloquially understand laziness to mean, than the cleverer reinterpretation used by Wall to describe what I understand as work substitution in programming as a non-novice.