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

blog.senko.net

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

#521

Post by armdave »

Given a well-defined set of requirements, writing correct code (pre 2026 LLMs) IS a hard task. There is only a small set of the population that, even after several years of training, can write correct code; this scarcity is what made coding one of the highest salaried professions.

However, coding in itself generates no value to a business. A business makes money by solving its users' problems; coding is just one of the means to do so.

This article is directionally correct (although a bit verbose) in adding that the best programmers did not ONLY write correct code, but also expanded their scope to understand how best to solve user problems.

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

#522

Post by Sweetdevil144 »

I think computer code is largely misunderstood by people as 'Python' and 'Javascript' because unlike some of us here, not everyone had to decide 'which language should we build this in?' I remember an year ago I was building a Version Control Database and i had to carefully opt out of python, Java etc. to choose Go due to dynamic concurrency control. Programming is not limited to building an "AI website" and believing 'Coding is the easy part', once you go beneath the iceberg and understand how Assembly interacts with different languages, what makes C faster than C++, how raw vector operations are more efficient that loop operations, then only a person understands the significance of this statement.

This is more of a rant from my side, but I believe "Coding is the easy part, Programming and Designing an efficient system" is where true grasp of Programming is checked.

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

#523

Post by pull_my_finger »

It's almost as if the business-side/idea-guy founders never really respected their tech co-founders/CTO's etc. The same people hyping up (beyond it's current due) AI are the business side that are a little too eager to dump what they thought was a necessary burden in "their" newest venture.

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

#524

Post by snowe2010 »

yallpendantools wrote: post #443
Aeolun wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a sufficiently complex consumer or enterprise app winds up having big performance problems if people don't know what they're doing Yes, and absolutely nobody will care if it does the thing it was meant to do. Performance is near always an afterthought because there is no single team that gets judged on performance.

I think we often don't realize how much performance is part of the user requirements (i.e., "the thing it was meant to do") because users don't specify that as a requirement. And when they do we get all engineer-y about it and start asking about TTFBs, throughput rates, TPS's and nobody gets anything sensible out of the conversation. But users don't mention it because they don't know how slow complex systems could be…

I feel like this story just supports the claim that coding isn’t the hard part. Collecting those requirements is harder.

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

#525

Post by jemiluv8 »

This post misses a couple of points

1.”Writing software was never the hard part” - isn’t saying coding was easy. The comparison was against building a viable product. Doing business involves a whole lot more ambiguity than sitting in your room writing code. You could build anything and yet the hard part was building something that matters

2. >> Nobody knows how the AI revolution will play out in the end

I disagree with this statement as far as Software Engineering is concerned. We kinda know. Everyone uses an agent harness to code this days - the only real difference is in how - and that still sets developers apart but most are using similar tools.

This reads more and more like clickbait. Sorry. I always find posts like this outrageous but I suppose that was the author’s intent. Outrage will get you votes. Taking extreme positions in an argument will get you attention. Kuddos

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

#526

Post by Invictus0 »

rightbyte wrote: post #456
Invictus0 wrote: post #276

Too many people on hacker news sound like blacksmiths at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Get with the times, artisanal handwritten code is worthless

Blacksmiths were petite bourgeois. We are not.

idk what the point of a 5 word argument is but I'm going to assume you're talking about blacksmiths being business owners? most SWEs have equity as part of their compensation

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

#529

Post by snowe2010 »

lelanthran wrote: post #478
gosolozero wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I resonate with this and the article above. I think 80% of a SWE's job is to communicate with the XFN partners (either gathering requirements, pushing back, managing up, collaborations, etc) and then plan out the actual coding (gather code pointers, look at past code, plan architecture, talk to the team). The last 10% is the coding. And then the other 10% is the maintenance of that and past code (which honestly…

> I think 80% of a SWE's job is to communicate with the XFN partners (either gathering requirements, pushing back, managing up, collaborations, etc) and then plan out the actual coding (gather code pointers, look at past code, plan architecture, talk to the team). The last 10% is the coding. And then the other 10% is the maintenance of that and past code (which honestly should be a lot more but incentives are not ali…

This logic makes no sense. If 90% of a software engineers job is not coding, then the valuable part of their job isn’t coding. It’s the other things. Else junior devs or interns would be doing all that work.

So no, they aren’t interchangeable with the office receptionist, else the office receptionist would already be doing that job.

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

#530

Post by jerhewet »

jemiluv8 wrote: post #525

This post misses a couple of points 1.”Writing software was never the hard part” - isn’t saying coding was easy. The comparison was against building a viable product. Doing business involves a whole lot more ambiguity than sitting in your room writing code. You could build anything and yet the hard part was building something that matters 2. >> Nobody knows how the AI revolution will play out in the end I disagree wi…

> Everyone uses an agent harness to code this days

No we don't. I don't care what's at stake; I will never use spicy auto-complete.

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