something in computers.

My ex-boyfriend used to make fun of me because I didn't know what my siblings did for a living. He would ask me what a particular brother did, and I would say, "He's a computer programmer."

"Could you be more specific?"

"He, uh, programs computers."

Apparently, I was expected to know more than that. Then at some point, I became a computer programmer, and then he asked me what I did. I said, "I'm a computer programmer."

"Could you be more specific?"

"I program computers."

"More specific."

"I write software for the trucking industry."

"There!"

That was all he wanted. He wanted to know what kind of programs my brother wrote. I'm not sure why that's important, and truth be told, I still don't really know the answer about my siblings. They program computers.

Now people do frequently ask me what I do, and I tell them that I write software, because I prefer the title "software engineer" over "computer programmer." Usually, I get blank stares or some comment about how I must be smart or make a lot of money or maybe I would like to come look at their computer and figure out why Windows freezes sometimes. Every once in a while, someone will ask me to be more specific, so I tell them about the trucks. An even smaller percentage will continue and then ask what kind of programs the trucking industry uses and how they work, and then I start talking about truck diagnostics. Still, for most people, the title of "computer programmer" would be enough. And if later, someone else asked them what I did, they would say, "Oh, something with computers."

It's true that I have run into some confusion when I say that I write software. "You, uh, write? Software? Um, okay." Some people do not know that a computer program is something that is written. Maybe they think it is somehow generated automatically given some settings (although programming does seem to be going in that direction). So, for the benefit of all you who do not know about software (which, once you subtract my family out of my readership, counts as probably two people), I will explain to you how software is written, how a computer is programmed.

The computer is basically an instrument that carries out instructions. It can do lots of neat stuff, but you have to tell it what to do. That's my job, to tell the computer what to do given a set of circumstances. The computer speaks computer-language, but I do not. So I write the computer's instructions in a special kind of language, one that is not quite plain English, but definitely not computer-language. Then I feed my file into a special program that acts as a translater. Basically, it turns what I wrote into something the computer can understand. Obviously, what I wrote has to follow a very specific set of syntax rules, otherwise the translation program gets confused and can't read it. After all, it's just a program and it doesn't have any intelligence on its own.

So that is what I do on a very simplistic level. I know you didn't ask, and if you had, the fact that I am a computer programmer is enough for you. After all, just those two words give you an understanding of what I do. I program computers.