code face

English

Etymology

Blend of code +‎ coalface.

Noun

code face (plural code faces)

1. (computing, informal) The place where programmers develop source code (as opposed to conceptually distant areas such as design and marketing).
   • 1992, Patrick A V Hall, Software reuse and reverse engineering in practice:

     […] hype merchants of the computing world are up and running off towards the horizon before the IS workers toiling away at the code face are even crawling.

   • 1992, Derek Partridge, Engineering artificial intelligence software:

     Why is it that, everywhere we look in the software world from academics, for whom computation is an abstract notion way above the trivializing clutter of actual computers, to hard-core systems designers and programmers, people actually working at the code face (as it were), we encounter this urge to apologize for the current techniques and to seek improvement?

   • 1999, Barb Knox, “Y2K Optimism: Unjustified in survey”, in comp.software.year-2000 (Usenet):

     This was a CIO Magazine poll of senior managers, not a poll of programmers at the codeface. Programmers will get enough deserved blame in the Y2k aftermath; please don't incite undeserved blame.

   • 2003, Robert L Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering:

     Documentation is at least one conceptual step away from the code-face, out of date the moment it's written, and difficult to write […]

   • 2007, Pete Goodliffe, Code craft: the practice of writing excellent code:

     Code craft starts at the codeface; it's where we love to be. We programmers are never happier than when immersed in an editor, bashing out line after line of perfectly formed and well-executed source code.

Alternative forms

• codeface