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

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

#381

Post by ozgrakkurt »

agentultra wrote: post #308

The author might be missing the intent of the observation. Maybe they’re misinterpreting it. What I, and many people who’ve said, “code was never the hard part,” aren’t referring to the skill of an individual. It’s not the hard part of the engineering process of developing software. Programming languages have manuals. Many data structures are well documented. There are frameworks for damn near everything. While the d…

Organization is too abstract here.

It also depends on how you model the problem. You can easily say the hardest part is hiring people if you are the boss. Since the people you hire can do everything else that needs to be done.

Managing and motivating people is the hardest part for the person who is doing it.

If you are hiring you might say it is harder to find good managers than programmers.

It is not measurable who did a good job at what as almost everything requires a group of people doing different things.

You can see how pointless this is becoming as we don’t have a measure for anything.

This kind of problem requires assumptions because it doesn’t hing on anything natural.

For example, if you start by believing salary indicates value then you can go from there.

In the end there are millions of managers, millions of programmers, millions of ux designers etc. It is kind of funny to suggest doing any of these is inherently harder than the other.

Just imagine you are judging a project. You have everything about it recorded. How hard do you think it would be to judge who had more part in the outcome in what way? If 10 people judged it separately, how many would have similar opinions etc.

It is impossible to judge even for a specific case, so it is a joke to consider to find the universal rule for it.

In the end it is ok to believe something but it is also important to not forget that it is a belief

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

#382

Post by noman-land »

mawadev wrote: post #309
nemothekid wrote: post #270

This feels like post-LLM coding romanticization. Before LLMs, people would regularly say stuff like "I could build this in a weekend" under a "Show HN" post. How many times have people said "I could build Twitter in a weekend". I've even found in a post-LLM world, that kind of language has only increased. When you are looking at something that already exists, where all the requirements are defined, when all the edge…

You are putting a lot of words and judgements into the authors mouth. Why exactly is it acceptable to not just do your role and expect the underlying requirements to be correct and measurable, especially when there are separate roles whose sole purpose is to do exactly that?

Because being a code monkey is getting devalued like crazy every hour that agentic coding improves in ability. If all you do is take well specified requirements and turn them into a piece of code you are going to lose your livelihood unless you can learn to do more than that or you're at the very top end of people who do that.

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

#384

Post by nevdka »

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…

A big problem with online discourse about programming if that so many people are in bubbles that they think are normal and think that anything outside of their experience is niche and rare.

‘Enterprise’ software includes SaaS, internal LoB software, integration work, and a bunch of other things I can’t name. The LoB and integration work is usually boring from a technical point of view, so articles don’t get written as much, and they likely wouldn’t do as well on HN, compared to something highly technical about scaling something to serve millions of users. There’s probably many more hours of work, and more programmers, doing LoB and integration, but people in a SaaS bubble don’t see what happens elsewhere.

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

#386

Post by Jblx2 »

tptacek wrote: post #378
Jblx2 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument that electrical and mechanical engineers are not smarter than the average person? How about figure 8 (PDF page 86) of: https://web.archive.org/web/20120905095856/http://www.ssc.wi...

Doesn't this basically make the argument I'm making, that there's no well-defined band of IQ test scores for different professions?

I'm not seeing any other posts of yours on this comment thread. Maybe you forgot to hit the "reply" button (or accidently outed an alt?) My only point was that majormajor saying that programmers might only be roughly the same smartness as electrical or mechanical engineers would put them comfortably above the average person.

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

#387

Post by hakunin »

jubilanti wrote: post #249
hakunin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

I get what you're trying to say, but coding is hard. A significant percentage of children struggle with it from the very beginning, unable to reason in a very specific way, read and understand errors, trace incredibly detailed logic, gain mental model of memory and state, etc. According to these[1] sources[2] computer science has the highest college drop out rates: ~10.7%. I worry that "code was never hard" is going to become a misleading truism for business leaders.

[1]: https://missiongraduatenm.org/college-dropout-statistics/#:~...

[2]: https://www.coursmos.com/college-dropout-statistics/#:~:text...

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

#388

Post by jghn »

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…

Mostly this. The phrase "code was the never the hard part" touches on a larger culture war. I was I was moving up in the ranksit was common to see people, both myself and then watching others, say things like "I just want to code".

Coding was the job. But there were diminishing returns in that getting better at coding wasn't as impactful as getting better at all the social skills, big picture strategy, and general scheming.

Maybe "code was never the hard part" should be replaced with "coding wasn't the most important part". But I think we all know what it means. Those higher level skills are the things that LLMs can't do, at least for now. Coding? It can do that, at least sort of.

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

#389

Post by apothegm »

chasd00 wrote: post #315
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also been doing this professionally for about 30 years, plus another 10 as a hobby/learning before then, so I think I have much of the same experience as you, and I do agree. Although, I think with the advent of LLMs, programming is no longer the hard part. The hard part of programming is the convergence of context management for humans while also presenting it to a computer to do something. Much of data structu…

This is a very good comment, one of the best i've read here. > I would say that "good engineers" or "good coders" found that balance in abstraction to move fast but make abstractions not overkill. i think this is spot on and could be where the concept of "llm's have no taste" comes from. There is art (and science) in determining the right level of abstraction that satisfies the user story in a performant way while le…

Not just the right level of abstraction but the right choice of abstraction.

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

#390

Post by ChiperSoft »

At the start of my career I was being paid for the code I wrote.

By the end of my career I was being paid for the code I didn't have to write.

One of the nicest complements I ever got from a coworker was that he was astonished how much I accomplished with so little code. Everything I built was designed to be easily and quickly extensible with minimal changes, I planned my structure for future needs.

That is why high paid programmers have been in demand, because learning that takes more than intelligence, it takes wisdom.

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