I'm 34 years old and have been programming since I was 14. I loved it from day one. I still love it. Even after tens of thousands of hours, two CS degrees, and hundreds of projects, I still am still amazed that I get to get up every day, go to my office in the basement, and can literally type into existence complex systems. I love it. I love the problem solving and making stuff work. I get frustrated with people from time to time, but on balance I want to continue to be a programmer as long as I live.
Programming is boring
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Re: Programming is boring
#22Programming might be boring. Engineering is not.
Re: Programming is boring
#23Truth but unlike other professions, throughout the rise of the internet, github, what-have-you, we, programmers have been able to counter the boringness and move to other opportunities in the industry. For example, someone who wrote test hardware code in embedded C, can move towards full software iOS development which is at two ends of the tech industry. The opportunity produces excitement and the further attainment…
> a pilot who flies a Boeing 777 will not be able to easily switch to flying an Airbus 330.
Can you provide more detail on that? Pilots have to be "type rated" for the aircraft they fly, and some aircraft share type ratings because they are substantially similar. Flight Training International shows the same amount of time for A330 and B777 training, with the most intense complete training course lasting two weeks (plus "homework").
Re: Programming is boring
#24This is unbelievably cringey and this person is in the wrong profession. The fact that they seriously pretend that good programming = boring is embarrassing, as is their caricature of people who enjoy the field as cowboys.
>Screw writing anything down or discussing your issues with you further! This is exciting! Oh if it goes wrong I’ll just quit because look at my CV, I’m doing triple heart bypasses like crazy!
This person needs a hug or something. Many doctors absolutely love their job. They love doing things that matter, and dealing with unique problems (and almost all problems are unique). Their anecdote is yet again a tired jealous screed trying to imagine themselves to be the good coder.
Re: Programming is boring
#25When I got married, as part of our pre-marital counseling, we had to take a personality test. One question I got rated as a "2" (on a scale of 1-5), but I couldn't figure out what the question meant.
Turns out that in our world, it's product lifecycle. 1 is initial conception, 2 is prototype, 3 is rollout, 4 is major enhancement, and 5 is maintenance. My personality is that I find maintenance boring.
But that isn't necessarily true of all programmers...
Re: Programming is boring
#26What is boring is having to spend eight hours a day among people who think that programming is boring.
Hackernews fetishes articles from managerial programmer types who have come down from the mountain of business mediocrity to tell all people with creativity and passion that it's getting in their way.
Re: Programming is boring
#27All of the stuff that comes before, after and in-between the programming part is what's exciting imo. The idea phase is exciting. The planning phase is exciting. The thrill of seeing users use what you have programmed is exciting. Being able to iterate upon user feedback is exciting. Watching something that you programmed grow into a useful and productive app is exiting.
I would be bored to death if my days only involved programming.
Re: Programming is boring
#28I'm 34 years old and have been programming since I was 14. I loved it from day one. I still love it. Even after tens of thousands of hours, two CS degrees, and hundreds of projects, I still am still amazed that I get to get up every day, go to my office in the basement, and can literally type into existence complex systems. I love it. I love the problem solving and making stuff work. I get frustrated with people from…
I'm with you 100%, just 2 years older. It's fun, and it's a huge privilege, especially when you take the historical view of human work. I don't want to move up a management ladder. I want to program until I retire.
Re: Programming is boring
#29Programming is beautiful!
I'm writing an authorization expression parser that generates a Validation applicative functor (whose errors form a semi-group, so cool!). The users will only notice that the error messages when they fail authorization will be descriptive of what they're missing. The developers love it because they get a rich, descriptive language. And it makes me happy because it's actually not a lot of code.
If I had written it the boring way there would probably be more code, be less useful, and I would've tried to find some way to punt the work onto someone else.
Beautiful code is not just a way to check of your *-ility's. It's also inspirational. And being inspired leads to creative solutions which amplify the value you can generate. Sometimes the boring solutions lead to byzantine, institutional code whose intent, purpose, and function remains a mystery.
For me clarity and utility stem not from documentation and mountains of tests. It comes from being succinct, clear, and precise. At least the author and I agree on one point: simplicity is key.
Re: Programming is boring
#30The boring stuff should be automated away, leaving only the fun parts.
I try to make the compiler do the boring stuff.