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Programmer’s Day is celebrated almost everywhere, because in the XNUMXst century the importance and necessity of this profession is clear to everyone. And in Our Country, the holiday is even official: almost ten years ago, the then head of our state, Dmitry Medvedev, made it such.
What date
There is no exact date for Programmer’s Day. To understand when you can start the celebration, you need to count exactly 256 days from the beginning of the year. Typically, in this case, on September 13. However, in leap years, the date of celebration changes to the 12th day of the first autumn month.
But why exactly the 256th day of the year? Everything is obvious, because the number 256 is almost sacred in the programming language. So, 256 is the maximum possible number of elements of any system with 8-bit encoding. And 256 = 28, where two symbolizes the binary number system, and eight is the number of bits in one byte – the highest value of the power of two, which results in a number less than the number of days in a year.
However, programmers recently started celebrating their day in mid-September. For a long time in our country it was customary to honor people whose work is inextricably linked with computers on April 22, because the digital way of writing this date is April 22.04, and 2204 is the specialty code “Computer software” in the All- classifier. True, this code is already outdated: some time ago it was replaced by 230105.65.
In addition, at least three more possible dates for celebrating Programmer’s Day are known. The first is July 19, the day when the first computer program appeared in the world. The second – December 10 – the day of the birth of the author of this program – Ada Lovelace. And the third – April 4: for Catholics, this is the Day of St. Isidore of Seville – the official patron of the Internet.
History
As mentioned above, IT specialists have been celebrating their holiday on April 22 for a long time. However, at the end of the last century, namely in 1996, Dmitry Mendrelyuk, a journalist and creator of the Computerra publishing house, put forward a proposal to celebrate Programmer’s Day on the 256th day of the year.
In 2002, this idea was picked up by the programmer of the popular web studio Valentin Balt. He drafted an appeal to the authorities of our country and collected the required number of signatures in support of the initiative. Moreover, he did not have to look for like-minded people for a long time: in five days, ten thousand people signed the appeal.
Then the Ministry of Communications took over the work, which eventually developed a draft presidential decree “On the Day of the Programmer” and in July 2009 submitted it to the Cabinet.
And less than two months later, Dmitry Medvedev, who then headed our country, signed a document prepared by the Ministry of Communications, after which the state calendar was replenished with a new holiday.
Traditions
As expected, on their holiday, the main heroes of the occasion receive congratulations and gifts from colleagues and loved ones. Often, management congratulates employees with bonuses, and awards diplomas and certificates to especially distinguished employees. In some groups, a tradition has already developed to gather on this day at the festive table.
Also in the middle of the first autumn month, programming contests are often held. Competitions are arranged both between individual experts and between teams.
In addition, many cities host scientific conferences where programming experts speak, or lectures and seminars are organized where you can listen to professional IT specialists, exchange experiences and learn something new.