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Why Programming is Difficult

joearms.github.io

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Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#151

Post by notacoward »

adamnemecek wrote: post #80
benched wrote: post #40

I think programming is easy. When I sit down to code something, it feels deterministic, and everything falls into place. I attribute this to: 1) IQ 3 standard deviations above. If I hadn't been this way when I started, I probably wouldn't have started. 2) I've been practicing hard, 25 years. That's a lot of time to try a lot of ways to do a lot of things, and find what works. Here's what's difficult for me, and what…

> I think programming is easy. What sort of programming do you do?

A very good question. Anyone who says programming seems deterministic has clearly only been exposed to a trivial kind of programming.

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#152

Post by defen »

lutusp wrote: post #91
truthteller wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the mismeasure of man" is a garbage book by the noted fraud and liar steven jay gould. it certainly should not be used as any sort of reference on intelligence testing.

> "the mismeasure of man" is a garbage book by the noted fraud and liar steven jay gould. When you post like this, do you ever stop to think how you're making psychology and its supporters look? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Awards Quote: "The first edition of The Mismeasure of Man won the non-fiction award from the National Book Critics Circle; the Outstanding Book Award for 1983 from the Americ…

Most of the stuff in The Mismeasure of Man regarding Morton's skull research was wrong. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjour...

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#153

Post by leobelle »

antics wrote: post #104
truthteller wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the mismeasure of man" is a garbage book by the noted fraud and liar steven jay gould. it certainly should not be used as any sort of reference on intelligence testing.

I don't know enough about The Mismeasure of Man to say whether it's correct or not, but Steven Jay Gould is about as eminent a biologist as there has ever been. The allegation that he is a "noted fraud and liar" is a pretty gross mis-estimate his work, and my personal opinion is that a misapprehension at this level makes it very unlikely that you have good reasons for believing what you do. To casual lurkers: what th…

I've seen truthteller's comments before. He should probably be hellbanned but he's flown under the radar for some reason. He's been around for 119 days, has tons of comments and only a comment karma of 37.

Look at this gem:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678987

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#154

Post by overgard »

shadowfiend wrote: post #74
benched wrote: post #40

I think programming is easy. When I sit down to code something, it feels deterministic, and everything falls into place. I attribute this to: 1) IQ 3 standard deviations above. If I hadn't been this way when I started, I probably wouldn't have started. 2) I've been practicing hard, 25 years. That's a lot of time to try a lot of ways to do a lot of things, and find what works. Here's what's difficult for me, and what…

Rather than focusing on the IQ remark, I'll mention that the entire point of this post is that programming is not just “sit[ting] down to code something”. A program written in a vacuum when you're sitting in your chair is useful to precisely one person at precisely one point in time: you, right now. When you're working on teams, under managers, within organizations, you're working to build something that's useful for…

Wow, the IQ thing really got under peoples skin, but I think his point is that the hard part of being a really good programmer is dealing with all the bullshit that managers invent to keep the mediocre programmers on the straight and narrow.

Problem being, those efforts essentially make one programmer indistinguishable from another by putting shackles on everyone. I admit there's a certain logic to it, building a business that's dependent on one person's talent can be dangerous. Better to make people interchangable.

All the same: Can you imagine John Carmack writing Doom back in the 90s having to deal with what most coders have to deal with nowadays (With all the "agile")? "No sorry John, you can't commit your highly inventive code without a proper story. We're going to need to have a planning meeting on this and size up story points. Please take a defect off the list. We don't need any heroes or cowboy coders."

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#155

Post by lbarrett »

mnemonik wrote: post #19
buckbova wrote: post #8

Most difficult part for me is letting go. I am compelled to febreeze every bit of code smell I come across. I often rewrite large sections of working code into better structures, more readable/concise syntax, better naming of variables/functions, etc. and In the process I have at times introduced bugs. But that isn't enough to deter me. I feel like I've accomplished something but in reality I have done nothing. It's…

I've had the same problem at times. It's kind of a mental masturbation; adding more abstract structures and more higher order functions. Need to strike a balance between Get Shit Done and leaving behind code that isn't a pain to maintain. In fact, often the kind of abstractions I've created when I'm in that masturbatory mode described above, it turns out that the abstractions aren't worth it in the end because they'r…

Yes, that's my experience as well! I'll carefully design code so that it can be extended and then find out I need to extend it in an orthogonal way I hadn't imagined, and my "extensibility" completely gets in the way. I've eventually just settled on, "build something simple and extend it when needed."

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#156

Post by yetanotherphd »

Programming used to be hard because of the hyper-optimization needed to get things to run.

Now programming is hard because of the giant scale of existing open source codebases.

It's not just the libraries, it's the toolchains, the build systems, the versioning tools, and that's just the things I've touched myself.

Someone once compared classical mathematics with modern mathematics, with the analogy of open pit mining vs deep shaft mining. I think programming has followed a similar trend. Modern programming involves strategically using existing tools, combining them without making major modifications to any of them. Of course, this is just for the individual programmer working on a discrete task. There is still room to participate in or lead large projects.

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#157

Post by joe_the_user »

overgard wrote: post #154
shadowfiend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than focusing on the IQ remark, I'll mention that the entire point of this post is that programming is not just “sit[ting] down to code something”. A program written in a vacuum when you're sitting in your chair is useful to precisely one person at precisely one point in time: you, right now. When you're working on teams, under managers, within organizations, you're working to build something that's useful for…

Wow, the IQ thing really got under peoples skin, but I think his point is that the hard part of being a really good programmer is dealing with all the bullshit that managers invent to keep the mediocre programmers on the straight and narrow. Problem being, those efforts essentially make one programmer indistinguishable from another by putting shackles on everyone. I admit there's a certain logic to it, building a bus…

I have to object that there is seriously more to project management than keeping the "mediocre programmers" in line.

I mean, there are overly ambitious programmers that do have to be reigned in, there are people held back by whatever structure you might and many variations of this.

And code has to be appropriate for it's purpose. I'm sure the code for Doom is great for Doom. If it is "cowboy code", it's probably not what anyone would want for an inventory control program that will be passed to someone else in six months.

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#158

Post by Mikeb85 »

mattmanser wrote: post #122
Mikeb85 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the workflow - it's about the fact that things like compiling files, linking libraries, are kind of basic concepts. For his prior apps (flash) he created objects using only a graphical interface (never wrote a single class), and the 'program' was a single 9000 line file where everything (all vars, functions, etc...) was in the global namespace with absolutely no organization, encapsulation, etc... Anyh…

Look, "someone only using IDEs with windows" is nothing like what you just described. You gave us all the wrong facts in the initial comment. You've identified all the wrong facts as important. Your fellow is abnormal to the extreme. That he's never met anyone in 10 years to tell him drag & dropping is not programming is one thing. Making your description match a good proportion of C# developers or even Java develope…

> That he's never met anyone in 10 years to tell him drag & dropping is not programming is one thing.

It's not drag and dropping, it's using a 'visual programming' tool that the environment encourages.

> The problem is not that he's using an IDE, the problem is he's not a programmer.

I wouldn't disagree, I like IDEs myself. I even use automatic completion in my word processor. The problem is that he never learned the basics.

> Bloody luddites clinging to their consoles.

It's funny how things always come full circle - search is the big thing now, everyone has an interface based on search. Windows 8, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, everyone.

We enter http addresses into our browser, and search for things using (gasp) text, but using the command line makes one a luddite. Great logic that...

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#159

Post by slaman »

kyllo wrote: post #110
gaius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, when I see 22-year-old kids in interviews claiming 10 years of programming experience, that's a negative signal for me. Commercial programming is solving problems you didn't choose, in a language that's not your favourite, using existing code you didn't write, for people you would never have met outside the job, in less time than you would like. In most real situations writing the code is the easy part,…

Maybe the kid has been contributing to open source projects? It seems like there are a lot of teenagers sending pull requests to prominent Github repos these days.

It's possible to have experience, but 'work' experience on a resume implies professional (paid) time.

Which in most places is illegal at 11 years, so it comes across to me as resumé padding.

Re: Why Programming is Difficult

#160

Post by bitcuration »

In short, working with computer is easy, working with people is hard. This is also reflected by salary. It pays to have the skill communicate, influence, or manipulate people.

Most programmer job is simply translate others thought to language that computer can understand. Therefore the difficult is never the programming part, but the understanding human being part.

Comparing to human ability making computer close to understanding human, civilization has developed much more advanced in manipulate human to think like computer, evidenced by all the gadgets surround us today. Comparing to programmers inventing new ways to make computing smarter or say closer to human, majority of corporate line of business IT programmers are merely temporarily filling the gap between human and computer, but for how long? There is no need exaggerate the Corporate experience, that's a translator job can be easily replaced by cheaper labor and eventually by smarter computer.

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