Today is International Programmers day, here we give you an insight into the state of programming, the future of code, and the history of the day itself.
Did you know that today is celebrated as International Programmer’s Day?
The day is chosen based on which day falls on the 256th day of each calendar year. Usually, it is today — September 13th, but during leap years, it falls on September 12th.
As computer scientists and programmers might know, 256 is the number of distinct values represented by an eight-bit byte. It’s also the highest power of two that is still less than 365 — the number of days in a normal year.
What is the history of this day and how can we celebrate it?
Russian Origins for a now International Celebration
Similarly to our popular mathematics day article, we wanted to cover the history of the day while providing ways in which to observe it.
Its origins date back to 2002 when two employees from Parallel Technologies launched a petition. Michael Chervaikov and Valentin Balt wanted the government of Russia to recognize this as the official “Day of the Programmer”.
In July of 2009, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media in Russia drafted the order to make it a new professional holiday. In September of that year, it became official. However, other communities recognized it as early as 2007.
In celebration of past iterations of the observance, developers “spoke in code” such as in the tweet below from @Raz88 on Twitter:
Curiously, some observe the day on January 7th instead of or as well as September 13th.
You can find the specified Facebook page for the January date here, though it doesn’t have much engagement. Since the Russian decree, more people recognize the September date due to its relation to bytes.
Embrace Your Inner Programmer With new Languages
Programming and development all revolve around different coding languages.
International Programmer’s Day celebrates all programmers, so that means that there are a ton of languages from which to choose.
For beginners, you might try something easy-to-pickup like Python. Everyone from EVE Online to the Google App Engine uses it, as well as NASA and Instagram. However, a contender has risen in the ranks to compete with Python.
Julia, which we recently profiled, combines the ease-of-use of Python with many other desirable facets from other programming languages. It might revolutionize technical computing in the same way that Node.js forever changed web development.
For someone interested in front-end development, learn what you can about JavaScript. While learning basic HTML worked in the days of Xanga and Myspace, that won’t cut it now. Almost everything on the web utilizes JavaScript and you can find tutorials easily.
You can even use AI to code these days thanks to a Houston-based research team.
Bayou, developed at Rice University, parses APIs to make navigating them more efficient for developers.
However, if the initial feedback doesn’t solve the issue, “Bayou’s example code should lead to a more informed question for their human peers,” says one of the AI’s creators. You can read more about it in our article here.
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