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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

#401

Post by didgetmaster »

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…

Writing some code that actually works for the problem at hand, can be fairly easy.

Writing code that does this while being clean and efficient is a lot harder. How many slow, buggy programs have been written because the assigned programmer did not yet have the expertise needed to do it right?

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

#402

Post by tripleee »

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.

The most important result of quality in software is that it's faster to produce and cheaper. How are people defining quality? We're not building tables with the finest wood.

Low quality ends up taking longer to build over the long run. It gets harder and harder to add or change features.

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

#404

Post by tripleee »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #390

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…

Right. The big misconception is that really good programmers just write code at 10x the speed of bad ones. Nope, the complete opposite in fact.

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

#405

Post by tripleee »

bvcp wrote: post #257
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #29

Yes, writing code that (appears to) work was not the hard part. Even before LLMs you could find very cheap contractors on Upwork or through offshoring companies to write "code". Well-engineered code is hard. It still is. Code that is reliable, extensible, maintainable, scalable, legible, understandable is hard. Code where the specs and the "why" behind it were pressure-tested via thought and good intuition.

customers very rarely have budget for the time it takes to produce well engineered code

And thus they end up paying even more for badly engineered code

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

#406

Post by agentultra »

hannofcart wrote: post #372
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…

If what you're saying is true we are moving into an era where rockstar product managers are going to be more in demand than programmers since they can do all of what you mentioned above. And typically (though not always) product managers have better people skills than programmers and consequently they might be more effective at the "gathering requirements" and "working together" bits you mentioned above. Even much of…

A test doesn’t prove much.

Highly experienced programmers seem to have a hard time understanding this.

Why do we have tens of thousands of test cases and we still find new errors constantly? Why is our software so bloated and slow? We do we still have security breaches?

LLMs can be useful tools when guided by experts. I don’t think a PM with a dream is going to cut it in the long run.

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

#407

Post by pessimizer »

hakunin wrote: post #387
jubilanti wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I worry that "code was never hard" is going to become a misleading truism for business leaders.

The fact that children cannot do it does not mean that it is particularly hard, and computer science attracts a lot of people who just like video games and have no mathematical ability.

I think that the fact that programmers were/are doing a lot of the job that other positions take credit for is significant. Others can get by on bullshit, but the programmer's job in turning that bullshit into code forces them to make something real out of it through a combination of back-and-forth interrogation and just making it up when necessary. Turning handwaving into a product is a skill that programmers have, and is why AI isn't helping tech-illiterate businessmen create things that work.

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

#408

Post by nunez »

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?

The $32M Hertz scandal

The $480M bug that killed a trading company in 12 secs

Challenger

Probably a bunch of stories from healthcare

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

#409

Post by nunez »

pdpi wrote: post #174
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.

Speaking/writing English is easy. Writing literature at the level of Shakespeare is hard. Writing educational content that makes hard concepts accessible like Grant Sanderson is hard. Likewise, coding is easy. It's just writing, and any child can learn it. Coding is not programming, and the hard part of the job lives in that distinction.

English is a hard language to learn, especially as an adult. So many weird rules that everyone takes for granted.

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

#410

Post by esjeon »

By saying coding is the hard part, you're insulting all engineers.

Edit: Although the current job market is heavily distorted, there used to be distinction b/w developer and engineer in the past. As the mainstream development model shifts from waterfall to iterative models, it became necessary for everyone to be engineering-capable -- only up to a certain point. So, every developer now carries a certain amount of engineering knowledge, but now they started to misunderstand and underestimate the value of engineering, and this is what you would get at the very end.

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