"This thing #{X} that I am inexperienced at is much harder than this thing #{Y} I spent years doing because I am experienced at #{Y} and have some idea how to do it and thus it feels comfortable. Why, I am going to go so far as to talk down everybody who still does #{Y}, partly because I'm somewhat burnt out on it, and partly because my comparative experience makes me feel like it's easy compared to #{X}." Where:- *…
Programmers' world is populated with very abstract concepts that they use to reason and draw conclusions. I think this post discuss the applicability of this reasoning outside of the virtual sphere. So assigning farming to #{X}, programming to #{Y} and then reasoning over X and Y without considering the reality of farming and programming is surely not the proper way to address this problem. In other words, I disagree…
"Growing food is far more challenging, requires an order of magnitude more knowledge and continuous learning and dedication."
Problems I have with this:-
* First and foremost, this is a pissing match. A better way of putting this might have been 'I found this more challenging, etc.' instead of some sweeping divisive comparison.
* It's meaningless - programming and farming are massive fields, what exactly are we comparing? Farming carrots in my allotment vs. a modern industrial farm. Hello world in qbasic vs. the linux kernel. Etc. etc. etc...
What's frustrating is that there are some really interesting points about, as you say, the real world applications of things, abstractness of programming, etc., but it's hidden below this unnecessary grumpy attack stuff.
Of course there's the just very grumpy:-
"Why are programmers granted such high status and wealth in our society for living in a self-created self-indulgant intellectual world of constant escapism"
Well, SpaceX did escape the atmosphere using some self-created self-indulgent intellectualisms ;-)
