Similarities:
- In both cases you have to explicitly say what it is you're going to do (for programmers, the design documents, specifications, etc.; for debaters, the policy, counter-policy, etc.)
- You have to deal with people asking potentially damaging questions
- You don't have all the time in the world
Differences
- No one asks you to write a fully working program in 7 minutes ("Hello World" doesn't exactly count here.)
- Debaters have more of a social life than [most] programmers
- You get to meet a lot of different people from different instituitions while debating, whereas for programming generally you only meet people within your company
- In both cases you have to explicitly say what it is you're going to do (for programmers, the design documents, specifications, etc.; for debaters, the policy, counter-policy, etc.)
- You have to deal with people asking potentially damaging questions
- You don't have all the time in the world
Differences
- No one asks you to write a fully working program in 7 minutes ("Hello World" doesn't exactly count here.)
- Debaters have more of a social life than [most] programmers
- You get to meet a lot of different people from different instituitions while debating, whereas for programming generally you only meet people within your company