A friend told me coding now feels like shaping clay on a pottery wheel. I haven't been able to stop thinking about what that means.

Computers: Cold, sterile, lifeless, inside-the-box, boring.

Real life: Flowing, messy, organic, unpredictable.

In computer land of the past, programs were traditionally made by thinking through problems in a highly mathematical, organized, and rigid way.

The way living organisms evolve is very different. For example: Why do humans have sinuses that drain from the top of our nasal cavity instead of the bottom? It only makes sense if we see how we evolved from creatures who didn’t walk upright. How many of our terrible colds would have been alleviated if we could just design ourselves the way we engineer software?

But now that’s changed.

Gone are the days of thinking through an app from start to finish and coding it according to a plan. One friend of mine said coding now is more like shaping clay on a pottery wheel. The code is ever-evolving in front of our eyes, and it’s our job to shape the clay as it spins.

As we all build the software tools that will define the next 10 years of our personal lives and careers, we’ll be continually molding the software programs that govern our lives. We’ll watch them grow, improve, and change just like a living organism.

We don’t know where the organisms we make today will end up in a couple of years, but we know that, like living objects, they will be flowing, messy, organic, and unpredictable.

For the rigid thinkers, this is bad news. But for those who’ve wanted a taste of the power programmers have always had without becoming inside-the-box and boring, it’s an incredible time.