Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers

blog.senko.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 351 posts

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

#241

Post by torginus »

ryandrake wrote: post #146
jvanderbot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot "as long as" ... as long as the buyers could never discern

The sad reality is that the vast majority of customers (whoever you are writing software for: clients, management, or end users) simply don't care as much about quality. If you give them the "time, cost, and quality" pick-two choice, 99.9% of customers are going to ask for fast+cheap. It's not the world I wish we were living in.

This isn't true. I don't think you or me would want a car/TV/smartphone that's cheap and flashy but breaks every two weeks. Sometimes people are strapped for cash that's why they cheap out on stuff, or really are enthusiastic about it, so they tolerate it breaking all the time, but for everything else, reliability is king.

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

#242

Post by sscaryterry »

tayo42 wrote: post #236
rockemsockem wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, a sufficiently complex consumer or enterprise app winds up having big performance problems if people don't know what they're doing w.r.t. the code they write and how they connect systems together with that code. Those performance problems start out not mattering much, first it impacts one seldom-used part of the site, then another, but that chips away at users and can eventually tank the product. That doesn't ev…

You've really seen a web software product die because of performance issues?

Yes, it is hardly ever the web-side of it though.

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

#243

Post by hintymad »

senderista wrote: post #224
hintymad wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that should be the engineers' job instead of outsourcing it to PMs who do not even use any of the infra services -- I'm not insulting the PMs, of course, but to state a fact. Infra is used to serve the internal engineering teams, and the PMs don't code, so they don't have a need to use the infra.

But do the infra team engineers use the infra they're building?

They do, and they help their users all the time

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

#244

Post by ivanjermakov »

prinny_ wrote: post #72

I believe there are some programming jobs in which the code is absolutely the easier part. Not all of us work in signal processing, integrated systems or have to push upstream to Linux kernel because the company we work for really needs a memory allocation optimization for its data centers. Navigating customer requirements and building something that satisfies both market's needs and company strategy can be an incred…

I'm yet to work on an enterprise project where programming is beyond simple validation, simple SQL, simple sheduling, simple mapping, simple error handling. Might be more about web backend than the whole field, but the challenge always comes from formulating requirements in a rigid form with all edge cases considered.

This might be the reason why many personal projects are so technical and impressive - it's the itch that's not scratched at work.

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

#246

Post by criley2 »

necovek wrote: post #176
criley2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

A business does need a small number of their most senior engineers doing high altitude work that can, at times, include helping sales estimate new features. But in my experience, it's not rocket science and a good product team can do this on their own with a quick async check over chat. At most, a single meeting is all it takes.

I've heard of Sales Engineers as well, embedding programmers directly with sales teams.

But the vast majority of programmers should not be spending any significant amount of their time on this. Their value is in building and scaling well-specified systems.

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

#247

Post by jibal »

prinny_ wrote: post #72

I believe there are some programming jobs in which the code is absolutely the easier part. Not all of us work in signal processing, integrated systems or have to push upstream to Linux kernel because the company we work for really needs a memory allocation optimization for its data centers. Navigating customer requirements and building something that satisfies both market's needs and company strategy can be an incred…

"easy" and "easier" have very different meanings.

I've read through these comments and, as is typical of HN, virtually none of them refute or even address the points made by TFA.

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

#249

Post by jubilanti »

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.

But I must insist: "building a car" is not hard (millions of children do so every year with Pinewood derby style box car kits), building a "real car" that you can use and that passes regulations is harder, but knowing the difference between the two is where the real hard work is.

The truly difficult work is knowing when your client/boss asks you to "build a car," do they really just want/need a small Pinewood derby box car as a toy, do they need a four-door sedan that can legally drive on major highways, an 18-wheeler freight truck, or do they actually need/want a bicycle, or a shopping cart, or a railroad box car, or information about how to take public transit that will serve them cheaper and easier than anything you could build in their timeframe and budget.

That's what people mean when they say that code was never the hard part.

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

#250

Post by ozgrakkurt »

neya wrote: post #227

The "code was never the hard part" is a narrative pushed strongly by designers, MBA guys and product managers. Even before AI, they've always treated programmers like low-lives, someone beneath them and completely replaceable like commodity. Ironically, of this entire group, it isn't programmers that are being replaced left and right. Whole product teams, designers are being replaced. Good coders are still in demand…

IMO it goes both ways. Each side can look into how they see the other side to understand the psychology of the other side.

Also I write good code and managers are thrash.

Post reply on HN