Why is the grass green and programmers cool

I love to find articles on news resources that programmers get a lot of money. I immediately flip through them to the comments and with warmth in my soul I read angry reviews that programmers do nothing and do not deserve such money. But after reading, the thought arises: do they know who the programmers are? Or they proceed in their judgments from wrong knowledge, without even knowing it. For example, few people know why the grass is green. Think about it. Does the color of grass follow from your explanations of green grass?

Why is the grass green

Just imagine, you have a small child (and some really have one). And the child asks you a typical children's question "Why is the grass green?" You have 4 possible answers:
1. “Because. Your ice cream is already dripping. ”
2. Quickly invented explanation (automatically solves the problem with the question about the blue sky). Template for answers on this principle:
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Nature has so successfully created our world, so that everything in it is nice and pleasant. Therefore, the sky is blue, the sun is yellow, the grass is green

3. A good clear explanation from the point of view of science in terms clear to the child.
4. Putting a bunch of scientific nonsense on a child so that he himself chose the right one and google the missing .

Probably the best option after all 3. But there is a problem. You do not know option 3.
Oh, you know option 3? Let's listen:



Fine. Why is chlorophyll green?



Great. The child will be exactly satisfied with this answer.
The answer "Because it contains the substance chlorophyll, which is green" is not a lie and gives the child the necessary answer. But he does not have the necessary knowledge. The fact that chlorophyll absorbs everything except green is the definition of green. From this point of view, the green cube is green only because it reflects green. And not because it was painted green.

Let's first explore option 4, and then simply simplify it to the level of understanding the child. So why is the grass green?

Chlorophilus (from the Greek. Χλωρός, "green" and φύλλον, "sheet") - a green pigment, causing the color of plant chloroplasts in green. With his participation is the process of photosynthesis. The chemical structure of chlorophylls is magnesium complexes of various tetrapyrrole. Chlorophylls have a porphyrin structure and are structurally close to heme. ( Wikipedia )



Now let's be childish. Seat your child in a high chair, tie him and start explaining.

So, the grass is green because it contains chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is needed to ensure the process of photosynthesis and to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, while obtaining energy for the life of the plant. And the green color of chlorophyll is associated with the process of photosynthesis.



White light is a mixture of all the colors of the visible part of the spectrum. Each color has its own light wavelength. Energy is inversely proportional to the wavelength: the longer the length, the lower the energy. This can explain why chlorophyll absorbs blue colors, because they have the highest energy.



The absorption of red colors depends on another characteristic of the light emission - the number of photons per unit of energy. Chlorophylls are activated not by energy, but photons. That is, the more photons, the more active the reaction of photosynthesis. The number of photons, on the contrary, increases with increasing wavelength.

Combining the energy and the number of photons, we get 5 different areas:

1. Photons are so small that even a lot of energy in everyone does not allow photosynthesis to proceed;
2. The number of photons is increasing, and now there are enough of them for the reaction, despite the fact that the energy has slightly decreased;
3. There is less energy, but photons are not enough, and the reaction is again under threat;
4. There are many photons, they continuously bombard the sheet and even their small energy is not an obstacle to the reaction: it flows even better than in the blue region of the spectrum;
5. Photons are practically losing their energy and their enormous amount no longer saves.

The result is an almost classic photosynthesis schedule:



From this graph it is clear that chlorophyll is much more profitable to absorb red and blue colors than colors in the middle of the spectrum, which give the plant too little energy. Therefore, chlorophylls reflect it. And we perceive the reflected color as green.

Compared with real physics, this is a rather simplified approximation, but still insufficient for a child. How to convert it all into option 3? Depends on your imagination. For example:

The grass is green because with this color it can get more heat from the sun and grow better.

This answer does not affect the chlorophyll-photosynthesizing drugs at all. But in my opinion, it is quite acceptable. First, he is truthful. Secondly, it explains the reason, and not the property of abstract chlorophylls of some sort. Yes, this answer is suspiciously similar to option # 2. But it follows from your knowledge that you simplify for a child's mind. And not from your ignorance, which you hide, so that the child does not think that you ...

- Dad, why is the sky blue?
- You morozhenko drips.

Why are programmers cool

What is this all about? From this example it can be seen that knowledge, which sometimes seems to us most close to the real picture of things, is not always so. How do people understand the profession of a programmer?

If I wanted, I would easily become a programmer.

Programmers do nothing

Economists have to do a lot of calculations, work with a bunch of pieces of paper, and in general, you would know how I get tired after a working day ...

I saw several economist theses. At that time, I also wrote a diploma and light daddies of 20 pages put me in a small surprise, since their contents were very similar to the economic part of my 100-page diploma. Do you know what a programmer does? The programmer will easily explain this. To another programmer.



I have depicted a look at the problem of green grass in the following figure. Reality is an infinite explanation of all aspects, from galactic collisions to inter-core interactions. A scientist is how this question is explained by an expert in this field. The person - how this situation will be explained by a person just familiar with the question. And the Child is just an observation of the phenomenon.

Imagine that the Scientist explains to the Child why the grass is green. In order for the Child to understand this, the conversation must be conducted in terms familiar to the Child, and with a considerable degree of simplification. If the simplification is done correctly, then when the Child gets further knowledge, they will be superimposed on the existing picture, revealing individual concepts, rather than replacing them with completely new ones. Chlorophylls and photosynthesis complement the initial model, but do not change it.

If we ask people who such a programmer is, we will get a whole range of answers: from “a person who works with computers” to “such a bearded scary man in a sweater with evil eyes” ;. But most likely, the most popular answer is “the one who writes the program”. What is a program? From the point of view of a programmer, this is a set of instructions for a computer / another machine / yes anything. But from the point of view of a non-programmer, a program is something that is started with a double click of the mouse. A curious thought flows from the difference in these views:

Programmers draw

This false premise arises in the Child when he first encounters the concept of a programmer. Then it expands to “programmers draw games” ( oh my god, I want to become a programmer and draw battlefield ) and “programmers draw Word and Excel”. It is difficult for a programmer who is a scientist to explain to a person what he does in the language of a person. Especially if the knowledge of Man is based on the wrong premise of the Child. The logic, which is the main component of the programmer’s work, is hidden for ordinary people. Hence the idea that programming is not so difficult and can be learned in about 21 days. Only those who have tried programming and achieved success can know the degree of complexity of the profession.

But can a programmer know how difficult an economist's profession is? Yes maybe. Because he is not only an artist.

What should be the right premise? Which would understand the child and which over time would turn into the correct awareness of the profession of a programmer. The child does not yet know the concept of an algorithm, and if he does, he cannot expand it to the whole world around him.

A programmer is someone who teaches a computer to do things that a person needs.

And now we have moved from the artist to the teacher. “Not only a computer, but also other mechanisms with an internal computer”, “a computer is harder to learn than a person”, “a computer thinks differently than a person”, “a programmer must know the computer language and understand it clearly can develop from this premise what need to do". And thus we add to the artist and teacher also a translator. Add the responsibility to learn new things to stay afloat. Add negotiations with the customer. And here we have an artist-teacher-translator-student-psychologist.

And all this is added to all professions that use a computer. If a programmer is writing a program for an economist, he should know all aspects of the economist’s work. He must understand the person who explains them, understand the very specifics of the work, teach this computer with the help of a program translated into the computer language. And play around with fonts.

Yes, I think that a programmer is a difficult profession. And of course, I am not completely objective. But I don’t want a man to idolize a programmer, feel sorry for and respect him. Or he reassured himself at work by making it harder for a programmer to work. I want the man to know. And he proceeded in his judgments not from hidden ignorance, but from simplified knowledge. Yes, the programmer should not know everything. To write a translation program, you do not need to know all the words of the German language in order to read their translations from the database. But the basics of grammar will have to learn. The programmer must adapt to the projects surrounding him, continuously receiving new knowledge and teaching this stupid computer.

Therefore, programmers are cool.

PS: The purpose of this article is not to insult economists.
PPS: The opinion of the author of the article does not fully coincide with the opinion of the professor of accounting. Just to let you know.