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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

#491

Post by socratic_weeb »

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…

This take is foolish and will always be foolish. Coding was mever easy in ANY domain (not just low level stuff) and the fact that we built syntax highlighting, high-level languages, auto-conplete, static analysis, debuggers, etc., in order to make it easier is the proof.

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

#492

Post by bdangubic »

necovek wrote: post #474
bdangubic wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

URL please?

Uhm, I wasn't under the impression this was Wikipedia: look for "FAANG interviews" at Google.com or Kagi.com or.... (I am not sure what part you want to challenge, so getting a better response is really hard — if it's all of it, I can't do better than above)

if those silly “puzzle questions” are important (they are not) they’d be a website where SWEs would be competing/hacking on etc - leetcode style.

no one gives a flying fuck about that if you can code - no one

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

#493

Post by bdangubic »

turtlebits wrote: post #300
bdangubic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“understanding requirements” is as much “wearing other hats” as having hands is “wearing other hats” for a carpenter. coding is always the hard part, always. whenever I was on any project and we had more work than resource we never hired “people to wear other hats” - we hired people to write code, that’s it. thats the fucking job. you ever see a leet-code-for-understanding-requirements? yea, me either…

Carpenters don't just nail things together and expect that to be a usable/useful product. If you can't/won't understand what you're supposed be doing, you're either useless or making useless shit.

understanding is a given and not “wearing other hats” - there is just one hat

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

#494

Post by halsafar »

socratic_weeb wrote: post #491
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…

This take is foolish and will always be foolish. Coding was mever easy in ANY domain (not just low level stuff) and the fact that we built syntax highlighting, high-level languages, auto-conplete, static analysis, debuggers, etc., in order to make it easier is the proof.

Take a step into the business side of software. Code is definitely not the hard part. You wouldn't say wood is hard part (heh) of wood working. It is planning and architecting. When to use the right tools. Just because a ruler has hash marks that doesn't mean measuring is hard it means the ruler doesn't work without it.

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

#495

Post by inigyou »

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…

One of the Stack Overflow founders wrote about all the programmers who see SO as a series of CREATE TABLE statements and miss the rest of the trees.

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

#496

Post by inigyou »

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 those other roles don't exist. You have a very 1980s view of things. That just isn't how software shops work any more. Maybe yours does, and that's great for you, but they mostly don't.

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

#497

Post by inigyou »

mawadev wrote: post #434
noman-land wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting the requirements did not work properly before, what makes you believe it is going to happen now?

Yes, and being a code monkey who turned wrong requirements into wrong code wasn't valued much before, either. Sure you could paid enough to get by, but not the big bucks.

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

#498

Post by inigyou »

maxrev17 wrote: post #30
bluejay2387 wrote: post #25

I agree, the whole 'developers don't code' AI defense was pretty ridiculous. I also concur that development is going to get a lot harder. Anyone that has successfully used AI coding tools knows that you can get massive productivity increases but now I have to figure out how to get a bunch of hyper active child like coding entities with memory deficiencies to build stuff without going off the rail and introducing mass…

No one seems to mind the quality drop though. The buyers of this stuff could never discern.

The Linux desktop just exceeded 10% because Microsoft is such shit.

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

#499

Post by inigyou »

pydry wrote: post #155
sensanaty wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely noticing, I imagine the populace at large will soon too. I'm not even talking about random software either, the company I work for has more and more fired that need to be put out because people are spamming out ai-generated code that was at best rubber stamped. Not even just the customer-facing stuff either, the internal tooling is on fire more and more often. It's not sustainable in the slightest

It took a while before the MBA hivemind woke up to this happening because of outsourcing two decades ago.

In the meantime their slowness should be our opportunity. Indie gaming displaced AAA when AAA started making the same franchiseslop games every year.

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

#500

Post by inigyou »

varjag wrote: post #73
mrkeen wrote: post #13

The answer to all these "if coding is easy" questions is that coding isn't programming (to put it in Lamport's terms). Encoding your ideas into a programming language is easy. Understanding that your ideas are bad is hard. You have clients with multiple devices connecting to your backend simultaneously, while you mediate their interactions with your partner systems. Their versions might not be up to date. It's a dist…

Nope, coding was still the hard bit. Every failing programmer would jump into architects or prod management but not the opposite way.

That may have worked while they still had programmers acting as a shield between them and reality. If a bad architect tells an LLM how to make a system, it won't work.
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