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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

#551

Post by juliendorra »

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.

Writing is not easy, and most children need years of training to write at sufficiently good levels. Writing is the technology we invest the most for training on as society

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

#553

Post by juliendorra »

If writing code is hard, how is it possible that so many kids learn it in a few months? I learned to program in basic at 9 with literally 2 books (no web back then), at 12 I was coding little programs in turbo Pascal, learnt with just the manual (it was a very good manual). I was not a genius. Granted it gets a certain type of mind to want to learn programming, but it’s far easier to learn than the pedestals it sits on (writing, reading, some maths and planning logic). Also code itself demands very few cultural background to start, hence why we have teenage dev genius but no teenage historian genius

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

#555

Post by tommyage »

ben_w wrote: post #118
bob1029 wrote: post #9

> If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)? Because programmers have generally been forced to wear additional, invisible hats that are essential to making the code happen in the first place. Writing code is not hard. Writing correct code is. Knowing what is correct in a setting with paying customers generally involves interacting with t…

> 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. Invoice: $1000 One bolt tightened: $1 Knowing which bolt to tighten: $999 > The gigantic salaries paid to the most prolific employees is not due to their ability to write code. It is due to their ability to interrogate the shit out of the customer until t…

I want append:

We have studied. We constantly educate ourselves (I have still not yet managed to work through the entire SICP on my own). Our tools are changing constantly. We are juggling information through devops, requirement engineers and customers. We advise daily. We get consolidated if something is complicated to summarize. We do forensics. Constantly under the pressure that some bit rot may open a new urgent bug we have to investigate. Money AND reputation on the line. It is a damn stressful job. So if we do our craft, we do it with incremental knowledge. Carefully. We build community of trust in our free time to get connected and improve. Any new member gets welcomed and onboarded. His knowledge im the future will supplement ours. So we mentor additionally.

Now comes AI. Collects the knowledge and hands it over to anyone. And we know: It is UNSAFE. Don't get me wrong; I consolidate it now as well, just to keep up with the increasing pressure to investigate. But the thing is:

While we did our craft so that we won't have to touch it in the next five years, the complexity increases every single day. And its out of our hands. If some junior comes in and starts writing decent code with ai it is nice. Until it breaks and AI won't help. Or worse: Gets applied on customer data in the wrong way.

A new ticket for the greybeards (by no means, I am not such). I think we are on the wrong track. Using ai decreases my abilities. It increases the load.

I think we should get twice the salaries. It has become unbearable.

Could you imagine that your local file server for your family consists of a enterprise database, a key-value store, possibly multiple reverse-proxies, a vector database.... my point beeing: Complexity. Invariants, frameworks to get familiar with... And the tool to supplement the demand is intransparent (but probably deterministic? Idk). It feels just so wrong.

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

#556

Post by mattkrause »

rockemsockem wrote: post #534
pjmlp wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the countries where Engineering is a professional title and not something people decide to call themselves, we still know the difference.

This is such a tired take. Aerospace engineers who build rockets do not have some certification body allowing them to be called engineers. Same with most electrical engineers working on almost everything. If you think a government deciding who is an engineer is a *good* thing then maybe you should ask yourself why the United States which doesn't require this for the two non-software engineering disciplines has the be…

Annoyingly, the US government still sometimes does.

If you want to take the patent agent exam, your CS degree has to come from an ABET-accredited program, though many of the very good ones aren't (Stanford, CMU).

Likewise, federal jobs also sometimes seem to want accreditation but not always.

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

#557

Post by deterministic »

An excellent read. However, this part is wrong:

> Those decades spent fighting memory bugs in C or C++, with the scars to prove it, are worthless.

The world runs on C and C++, with billions of lines of code. That code isn't going away. And with AI, maintaining, debugging, and updating it is becoming much easier.

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

#558

Post by deterministic »

rockemsockem wrote: post #534
pjmlp wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the countries where Engineering is a professional title and not something people decide to call themselves, we still know the difference.

This is such a tired take. Aerospace engineers who build rockets do not have some certification body allowing them to be called engineers. Same with most electrical engineers working on almost everything. If you think a government deciding who is an engineer is a *good* thing then maybe you should ask yourself why the United States which doesn't require this for the two non-software engineering disciplines has the be…

> has the best engineers in the world

Really? What evidence do you have for that? Are you saying that companies like Airbus, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, ASML, Leonardo, Rolls-Royce, Dassault Aviation, Toyota, Bosch, Komatsu, Siemens, ABB, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Alstom, Vestas, Samsung, Sony, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding etc. don't have world class engineers?

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

#559

Post by deterministic »

rockemsockem wrote: post #535
pjmlp wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many, I am at least aware of Portugal, Germany and Canada. https://www.lexpoint.pt/Default.aspx?PageId=128&ContentId=60... https://www.vdi.de/news/detail/wer-darf-sich-ingenieur-oder-... https://engineerscanada.ca/become-an-engineer/use-of-profess... You can call yourself engineer if you feel like it, however in case it comes to some court case due to liabilities and such, there might be some issues coming up with…

European countries, historically known for their dominance in the field of software.

Your mobile phone runs on a CPU architecture designed in Europe (ARM), manufactured by a machine that only a European company can make (ASML), using a number of protocols invented in Europe (Bluetooth for example), using protocols invented in Europe to browse the internet (HTML/HTTP), based on a very long history of computer science ideas and programming languages invented in Europe or by Europeans.

Give credit where credit is do.

Having said that, I do agree that US companies tend to be better at commercializing new ideas than European ones.

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

#560

Post by fragmede »

rockemsockem wrote: post #537
buran77 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but many details Which part of my list was just "a detail" to be dealt with at some point in the lifecycle (but only if you're not too busy shipping features) for you? You're laying bricks before knowing if the wall's supposed to be concrete. > Code is a form of low-level design and is where the rubber hits the road. Sure but in keeping with your analogy tires are fungible across most cars and it takes minutes to c…

Your comment brings ripgrep to mind. Grep is about as ubiquitous a software tool as you can get with a very clear contract on input-output and it has absolutely stood the test of time. Then ripgrep comes along, it has the same contract as grep (with I think a few inconsistencies that were intentionally tweaked for modern use-cases...and also I'm sure a few edge-cases from its design), but is significantly faster. The…

That's a really good example. The specific detail is that node_modules isn't something I want results from while I'm grepping around.
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