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Coding Is Hard

duttakapil.com

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Re: Coding Is Hard

#101

Post by idontknoworcare »

david-gpu wrote: post #95
Aaronmacaron wrote: post #93

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not…

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money This is a problem most commonly seen in junior developers. It leads to them making poor decisions that are not aligned with business goals. > I'm glad I program because I enjoy it Spend enough time working in the industry and that will go away. For your mental health's sake, I hope you find a hobby that is unrelated to your job. What you are…

[dead]

Re: Coding Is Hard

#102

Post by Freedom2 »

yuktrn wrote: post #25
dehrmann wrote: post #7

> That's when I decided that I didn't need to go to college. I could just teach myself, for free, through all these online resources. > I went through all the tracks, from basic HTML (again) to JavaScript and even Ruby amd Python. And I was super proud of myself for doing just that. I then started this 2-day python crash course... > It's been 10 years since I first started learning how to code. And I still struggle w…

I still struggle after 15 years into programming, and I never published or finished anything because of "judgement anxiety". I waste days, weeks, months writing and rewriting code and then I decide to abandon it because "other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever".

> "other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever"

Those who put down others or leave nonconstructive feedback, even HN commenters, are not worth your time worrying over.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#103

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

david-gpu wrote: post #95
Aaronmacaron wrote: post #93

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not…

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money This is a problem most commonly seen in junior developers. It leads to them making poor decisions that are not aligned with business goals. > I'm glad I program because I enjoy it Spend enough time working in the industry and that will go away. For your mental health's sake, I hope you find a hobby that is unrelated to your job. What you are…

I've been programming for closing in on 40 years. I got lucky when I was 32 with a position that let me get out of the industry, stay home and raise my daughter while slowly building a libre software project that has been ongoing for almost 24 years, and making a living from that for the last 14 years.

An important reason things have worked out as they have is because I continue to enjoy coding and I don't allow what I work on to be controlled by "business goals".

While your somewhat cynical take may reflect the experience of an overwhelming majority of the people who write software today, it isn't a description of the only pathway along a life as a programmer.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#105

Post by m463 »

jongjong wrote: post #97

I agree that coding is hard. This is coming from someone who's been coding for 15 years straight as my day job plus nights and weekends on open source. I've literally been working during 2/3 of my entire spare time excluding sleep (which is 6 to 7 hours per day).

I think coding can be easy and pleasurable.

But...

You have to start the project yourself. You have to start it with your tools, your language preference, and your ideas.

It gets harder when you have to adapt to someone else's environment, practices, requirements.

It is harder the further you stray from your ideal choices.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#107

Post by WalterBright »

Aaronmacaron wrote: post #93

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not…

I enjoy coding, too. But since there are so many fun things to code, I choose among the fun things things that are useful to others as well as myself.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#108

Post by WalterBright »

david-gpu wrote: post #95
Aaronmacaron wrote: post #93

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not…

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money This is a problem most commonly seen in junior developers. It leads to them making poor decisions that are not aligned with business goals. > I'm glad I program because I enjoy it Spend enough time working in the industry and that will go away. For your mental health's sake, I hope you find a hobby that is unrelated to your job. What you are…

I haven't burned out yet, and have been writing code for nearly 50 years.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#109

Post by Jensson »

kaashif wrote: post #79
Jensson wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's at most a signal for whether or not they remember algorithms 101 or some leetcode exercise, but knowing that they do remember isn't really useful to me For bubble sort? Do you really think anyone should have to remember an algorithm to write a quadratic time sort? All you have to do is "compare and swap" and loop through until you are done, this is way easier than Fizzbuzz. This is only hard if you have a hard…

> All you have to do is "compare and swap" and loop through until you are done, this is way easier than Fizzbuzz. I think you have this wrong, Fizzbuzz is actually completely trivial to the point where the problem statement is almost literally (modulo modulo) a description of the algorithm. Bubble sort is very easy but it's not literally trivial to the same degree as Fizzbuzz!

> Fizzbuzz is actually completely trivial to the point where the problem statement is almost literally (modulo modulo) a description of the algorithm.

Fizzbuzz requires you to read and understand a few lines of requirements. That is much harder than just "order these elements, runtime isn't important", you can easily miss some part of the problem statement or misunderstand it for Fizzbuzz and fail, you shouldn't but it can happen, no such thing for a quadratic sort.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#110

Post by gmgmgmgmgm »

david-gpu wrote: post #95
Aaronmacaron wrote: post #93

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not…

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money This is a problem most commonly seen in junior developers. It leads to them making poor decisions that are not aligned with business goals. > I'm glad I program because I enjoy it Spend enough time working in the industry and that will go away. For your mental health's sake, I hope you find a hobby that is unrelated to your job. What you are…

58, been programming since 13. Still enjoy it. Still both a hobby and a job
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