Question

Programmatically. (alt. programmically)

I’ve never used it, but I see it in questions a lot, i.e. ‘How to programmatically determine [insert task here]’. Firefox immediately tells me that neither of these two words are real (at least, it doesn’t recognize them). I’ve also never seen them used anywhere but here.

1) What does it mean to do/determine something ‘programmatically’?

2) Why do so many people ask how to do/determine something ‘programmatically’? Isn’t it assumed that, if you’re asking how to do something on a programming help board, you’re asking how to do it ‘programmatically’?

3) Why is it that I’ve never seen the word ‘programmatically’ anywhere else?

Answer 1

Doing something programatically generally means that you can do it using source code, rather than via direct user interaction or a macro.

For example, consider the problem of resizing columns to fit in Excel.

You could do it manually by double clicking between the columns, but that requires user interaction.

You could use the excel macro recorder, but that is fairly complicated.

Or, you could use VBA to write code that would do it.

I doubt it’s actually in the dictionary.