Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Prestige in Programming

Please read this quote from the movie Prestige very carefully.

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course...it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".



Every programmer has his own tricks on how he make his application stands out. Everyone see the output program or script or functionality and like it, let them enjoy the output, don't tell them anything else.

Once your programming prestige is revealed, that is it. You will start hear things like

"Oh, that's how he did it. I thought It's more complicated. "
"Aha you used that feature, everyone can do that" 
"No, my level of thinking and implementation was way beyond this"
"Instagram? I thought of that application before but didn't implement it"
"No my idea is way more sophisticated." 


Programmers are like magicians, they shouldn't reveal their tricks. Create tricks and keep them to yourself. Learn from others.

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