Showing it
Or is it possible he just loves programming? No doubt the filmmakers considered this option, but you can see their dilemma: how to convey the pleasure of programming—if such a pleasure exists—in a way that is both cinematic and comprehensible? Movies are notoriously bad at showing the pleasures and rigors of art-making, even when the medium is familiar.
(From Zadie Smith’s essay, Generation Why)
This is a problem that programmers often face. How exactly can they convey the sheer awesomeness of the stuff they create? Painters can point to their paintings. Mechanical engineers can point to shiny metallic objects. What can programmers show? Pages of incomprehensible code?
This problem is all the more exacerbated for programmers deep in the backend–those who hack infrastructure. At least programmers closer to the product and the front-end can point to shiny UIs and things happening on the screen and say “I made that!”