I never found programming agonizing.
Never?
Never some intractable bug, that didn't seem to have any relation to the source code you're reading?
Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#22For me the agonizing part are all the arbitrary things you have to memorize or lookup, that do not follow from the flow of the code or the principles on which the system is built. Struggling to find the right keywords to find which particular frob needs to be foozled for the program to start working, which may or may not be documented anywhere or written up by someone who already somehow stumbled across the answer.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#23It's agonizing because it's hard. It's captivating because it's possible.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#24I only find it to be painful when done for the corporate world... when I go home, even after 7 hours at the office, I find it therapeutic to push to main, not have a CI, not write tests, test in production, commit with one-liners like I'm asking someone if they want a beer, and overall just code any random idea that crosses my mind... even more so now with AI, because now I can get my ideas out there faster, and believe me, this is serious crapware, but who cares? I don't...
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#25The only things I find agonizing about programming: 1. unrealistic time frames and expectations from non-technical managers, and 2. leetcode Everything else is awesome.
Nah, I have another one: Being confronted with my own stupidity and my own limits in mental capacity. The shocking thing is that this never goes away, even after decades of practice.
Spoiler alert: this happens to literally everyone in every field and profession every single day.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#26I think what is agonizing is either the process imposed by the company or the architecture you are working with. Both can lead to immense frustration. When you have good architecture and a good development process, things become much less frustrating. I wanted to add one more thing: if you work on any idea you don't like, it doesn't matter the language, the platform, the architecture or the process. In the end you will feel the pain and frustration.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#27Through words and patterns you can change the operation of the machine, and thus alter the physical world. Your programs are wizardry! The part that sucks is trying to make magic happen within an organization run by boring accounting people. The only room for magic is begrudging.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#28It’s not agonizing or difficult at all, you just need like 20 years of obsession lmao
But seriously it’s easy after that. The hard part becomes:
- what do people want
- how should it look and feel
- how does it generate revenue
There’s a concept and execution phase to each of these that are difficult in their own way.
But yeah I have not stressed out about which for loop to use or if it should be monolithic or services etc in a long time. We have so many language options and you can even have a bot write it for you to the latest style and standard
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#29I never found programming agonizing.
To me frustration and excitement are related.
I've never punched the air after fixing some bug that I didn't at some point earlier get extremely frustrated at its intractability.
Re: Why is programming so captivating, yet so agonizing?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must not talk to other developers ;) But seriously, sometimes its not the code, it's the human factor that's painful, other times, well it's JavaScript.
Or at least the culture around JavaScript . I love writing JavaScript. I like React well enough. I'm not sold on NodeJS, though I'll accept that its struggles are no different than any other package manager. I just wish the whole thing would stand still for a minute. It's seriously exhausting to keep up with all of the deprecations, rewrites, new "best" frameworks, etc.
How is Node a package manager?