Programming is not a Glamorous Job

Most jobs are not glamorous in and of themselves, but can be glamorous for what you do with them. Programming is no different: it's the project, not the job, that makes the glamour.

I agree that glamorizing programming is not particularly helpful, except that coder-entrepreneurs can get more attention from venture capital. Glamorizing programming, along with the app-stores, is pushing the independent programming business into a "blockbuster" mentality, a winner-take-all situation where a small number of practitioners do very well and most don't ever make their development money back. Thanks, Steve Jobs!

Totally agree. Just because a movie came out and there is a show about startups doesn't mean its gone mainstream. Far from it. To top it off, what is represented in the media is such a small slice (ie. the startup scene) of what real world software developers do that its almost meaningless.

>I hate these broad sweeping titles on HN. Speak for yourself. I love my job, I work from home in an amazing home office I designed. I filled it with plants, little bonzai trees, art on the wall, inderect lighting for the evenings, and all the best work equipment money can buy. My environment is pretty much an extension of me.

If this is not sarcasm, then in any case it does not put a dent the "programming is not glamorous" notion a notch.

An "amazing home office"? With "little bonzai trees and indirect lighting"? "Invited by clients for events" and "programming conferences"?

That's not glamorous in any common use of the world. At best it's a geeks idea of what glamorous is. And even that trailer-park idea of glamorous is far from most programmers reality (as one can tell from programming median salaries).

But even if that was "glamorous" (which is not: by glamorous, common folks AND the movies TFA describes, mean the Ferrari, red carpet, model dating type of startup millionaires), the whole premise of the comment would still be a classical geek misunderstanding.

When people say "X is Y" they don't mean "ALL X is Y and only Y", they mean "most X are mostly like Y". And it's true that most programming jobs not only are not glamorous in the Ferrari sense, they are also not "glamorous" in the sense you describe above. So the "sweeping generalisation" is perfectly accurate in normal conversation sense. TFA never used a universal quantifier in the mathematical sense.

Well, so is being a lawyer or a doctor. Those jobs aren't what TV series and movies would have us believe either.

Most lawyers don't try high-profile murder cases. Most doctors don't save countless lives during their day-to-day work.

Even the most glamourous job of all - being a rock star - isn't really all that glamourous if you take a closer look at it. Those rock stars who ultimately love what they do and hence take their work seriously have to work very hard and be very disciplined to make it.

Same thing applies to programmers. Sure, most programming jobs are in a corporate environment and working in such an environment can suck quite a bit. However, the more your work sucks the more potential there is for actually changing something for the better, even more so if you're a programmer. Programmers can create wonderful designs and feats of engineering with little more than a bright mind and a computer.