What does it mean to do/determine something "programmatically"?

Posted by Chris Lutz on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Chris Lutz
Published on 2009-02-11T05:19:12Z Indexed on 2010/04/21 22:43 UTC
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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?

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