"Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#171

Post by tegiddrone » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

> Why did companies seek 10x ninja rockstar coders and subject them to leetcode interviews—surely, a junior fresh out of college could churn out something if it's so easy?

Because companies resent that they have to take on risk and pay people to extract value from the market.

Ugh, why do we have to pay people to code, maintenance, etc. Lets pay people to extract more value for our bonuses and shareholders. Lets try to only hire heavyweights so that we don't get hung up on that difficult-to-measure coding process, knowledge transfer, messy human-ness. Oooh how nice, we can hire a fewer employees that know how to leverage code agents that free them up to think about that what REALLY matters...

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#172

Post by luke5441 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #73

mrkeen wrote: post #13

The answer to all these "if coding is easy" questions is that coding isn't programming (to put it in Lamport's terms). Encoding your ideas into a programming language is easy. Understanding that your ideas are bad is hard. You have clients with multiple devices connecting to your backend simultaneously, while you mediate their interactions with your partner systems. Their versions might not be up to date. It's a dist…

Nope, coding was still the hard bit. Every failing programmer would jump into architects or prod management but not the opposite way.

Coding just often has a fast feedback loop. If you can't do it people are going to notice pretty fast. You can fail as an architect or prod management for a long time before people discover you are not good at it.

One thing that is good to have in all those positions is an understanding of the code base and where it can slowly evolve to and how that positions the code base best in the market. I'd say the best way to build this understanding is still to build parts of the system yourself. Not talk to experts or agents about the code base.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#173

Post by fragmede » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #62

Everybody saying "coding was never the hard part" is really telling on themselves. Coding was never "hard" because most organizations were absolutely unwilling to take on any technical work that was hard. That tells us about business strategy and culture rather than anything about the fundamentals of programming or technical work. The real conclusion is that programming is such a high-leverage activity that even tech…

Those corporations that undertake the actually difficult bits of programming end up charging so much money, to the point that people go out of to not use them though. Splunk, Oracle Database, Spanner, Datadog, VMware. We don't live in an idealized world divorced from business and money, unfortunately, but worse, software developers are notoriously cheap and hard to sell to. If I did the hard work and made a compiler that generate code that runs 10% faster, I should have a solid business. Even Intel couldn't make a business out of icc though. So the code is the hard part but business is also the hard part and it's a miracle any of this stuff ever gets off the ground.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#174

Post by pdpi » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

hakunin wrote: post #47

bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

> Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with those customers. That's like saying "building a car is not hard, building a real car that you can use and that passes regulation is". IOW, writing code is hard in every reasonable context.

Speaking/writing English is easy. Writing literature at the level of Shakespeare is hard. Writing educational content that makes hard concepts accessible like Grant Sanderson is hard.

Likewise, coding is easy. It's just writing, and any child can learn it. Coding is not programming, and the hard part of the job lives in that distinction.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#175

Post by chaps » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #144

chaps wrote: post #45

"Code was never the hard part" misses the point but so does this blog post. This blog post from 2011 is worth reading and really cuts into the middle of the dreads-of-programmer. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... Don’t call yourself a programmer: “Programmer” sounds like “anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo.” If you call yourself a programmer…

That patio11 post was good but you're overstating its relevance here by suggesting the thread's central topic is missing the point. The fizzbuzz part even undermines the "Code was never the hard part" message. If code was never hard, why has it always been so difficult to find talent that can do the most basic of tasks with code? Why was it considered a good average for programmers to only bang out 1000-2000 lines of…

TBH the "don't call yourself a programmer" part of this blog is the least interesting part of it. It's decent or awful advice depending on the person.

The more interesting part, to me, is the 15 year old recognition that programmers' jobs are to replace other workers. It's definitely not a new thought at all, but it's interesting to reflect on considering how the dynamics are starting to turn the other way around.

Saying this as someone who knows many programming languages... but I don't consider myself a programmer because that's too job-oriented. Like.. I write code for fun and "programming" isn't fun.. it's a living. This approach has let me follow multidisciplinary paths by framing my career away from the code-as-my-product mentality.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#176

Post by necovek » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #37

bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

I think you're confusing product and engineering. I get that programmers are smart so we just assume we can do every job, but it's a waste of your time and salary to talk extensively to customers and create product requirements. Let the PM's run the user research sessions, you can find more productive things to do. However, where we agree, is that there is more to engineering than writing code. It's problem solving.…

Product should, definitely, run user research along with Product Design. But what I find is that people in either have a problem imagining a solution that's a couple of orders of magnitude easier to build, but also much easier for our customers (usually boils down to making the right choices for customers — the savings are not in the common "choose good defaults", but in actually removing flexibility that's needed only in 1% of cases).

Thus, I insist on engineering being involved early to put real world constraints on wild ideation ("it would take 3 months for 5 engineers" quickly changes what's a must-have :)) — sometimes, a curious, critical mind can expose things like these without having to do the research or user testing themselves.

Now, throughout my 20 year career, it's been very rare to find a product person who will both understand customers deeply, tie their needs to business value, and be able to formalize the intersection of these in a form of good requirements for design and engineering to eventually build!

So I really believe an engineer's (and design) role there is to serve as a sanity check as they dive into actual building — does this really make sense? If they do not, they run the risk of a project completely failing or perhaps not even shipping once someone else questions the value of continuing to invest in this 3 month project 9 months in. ;-)

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#177

Post by mkehrt » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

relaxing wrote: post #49

bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

> The gigantic salaries paid to the most prolific employees is not due to their ability to write code. It is due to their ability to interrogate the shit out of the customer until they finally reveal the true requirements. That doesn’t describe any devs I know, especially not in the old days. Interrogating customers and bringing back requirements was the job of management (who got big salaries, too.)

I think this is true when you realize "customer" means "coworker" or "person on the next team over" or "management" or "your intuition about the problem". Which all sort of have the same shape.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#178

Post by Toutouxc » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #86

bluejay2387 wrote: post #25

I agree, the whole 'developers don't code' AI defense was pretty ridiculous. I also concur that development is going to get a lot harder. Anyone that has successfully used AI coding tools knows that you can get massive productivity increases but now I have to figure out how to get a bunch of hyper active child like coding entities with memory deficiencies to build stuff without going off the rail and introducing mass…

This is all the stuff that the frontier labs are going to ship by default next year. Except for the architecture specifications, which agents can already do adequately for most system today.

Do you have a source for that claim?

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#179

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

hakunin wrote: post #47

bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

> Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with those customers. That's like saying "building a car is not hard, building a real car that you can use and that passes regulation is". IOW, writing code is hard in every reasonable context.

I don't agree that "the coding was never the hard part" in general, but it is true at least often.

For those cases where it is true, it is pretty much like your example, and the distinction is there in your example just like theirs. You supported their point.

Re: "Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

#180

Post by tripleee » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:02 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #35

bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

>Writing code is not hard. Writing code has a minimum IQ requirement; a significant fraction of the population will essentially never be able to code by themselves. That labor supply limitation is what's kept programmer salaries relatively high.

I've watched dozens of people try to learn to code and fail, some definitely not for a lack of trying. Of those that did learn, only a fraction had the IQ or passion to be genuinely good at it.

The difficulty of it has absolutely been a bottleneck to the supply of good devs, keeping salaries high.