English

Noun

code face ‎(uncountable)

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 (discussion on Internet newsgroup comp.software.year-2000)

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     Documentation is at least one conceptual step away from the code-face, out of date the moment it's written, and difficult to write...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