Why Programming is Difficult

I tried to read the whole thing, but gah my brain just couldn't get past all the spelling mistakes. :-/

Good Article, I have found the hardest part of software to be the team work. It's hard to agreement on what's right, to write code that other people understand, to understand other peoples code, and generally just to get a good productive team working.

In fact a lot of software design is just for making things easier for humans. Otherwise we could have files that are 14,000 lines long.... The hardest part of software is the people.

strong ideas that are held weakly! I try my hardest to cultivate a mindset that allows people to speak freely and express their ideas and also drop said ideas when a clearly better idea arises.

Every idea brought to the table should have a counter argument, we should all carefully discuss the pros and cons of everyone's ideas, and we shouldn't hold so tightly onto a pipe dream because we really want to use xyz tech or because "we're used to doing it x way!"

If something is clearly better, safer, smarter, or mitigates risks that another idea doesn't then you need to accept it. I do not care how comfortable you are with your idea. It is time to switch gears and make the sensible choice based on the facts, not your personal bias.

Most difficult part for me is letting go.

I am compelled to febreeze every bit of code smell I come across. I often rewrite large sections of working code into better structures, more readable/concise syntax, better naming of variables/functions, etc. and In the process I have at times introduced bugs.

But that isn't enough to deter me.

I feel like I've accomplished something but in reality I have done nothing. It's kinda like cleaning behind the refrigerator. You know it's dirty back there, but it's not stopping the fridge from keeping your food cold.

Here's why I think programming will never get much simpler than it is now...as our stacks and applications become more sophisticated and powerful, so do the relations between the systems...Apple has managed to make things simpler on iOS by clamping down on what developers and users can do, which is one possibility for a "simpler" future. But for those who do want to be developers and have flexibility...complexity will just have to be a way of life.

As an example, I recently tried my hand at making a Chrome extension using the Yeoman build tool. It was a simple plugin to allow you, on Reddit IAMA pages, to hide all comments except those from the IAMA subject and their direct questioners, and to also auto-load all comments:

https://github.com/dannguyen/iama-highlights-chrome-extensio...

Figuring out how to use the yeoman build tool took about 30 minutes (it's not quite fully developed)...it took about 30 minutes to browse through the Chrome extension documentation and then think of what I wanted to do. About 10 minutes to write the actual jQuery.

...And then about 3 - 4 hours figuring out why the comment auto-loader wasn't working. I thought I could simply just have my jquery activate the "click" event on all "load more comments" links...but a recent Chrome upgrade clamped down on security, effectively sandboxing all extension code and preventing it from executing existing inline JavaScript.

IMHO, this is a good security measure. But it just goes to show you that when things are made "easier" (the scaffolding of the extension, the jQuery to do DOM/AJAX work), there are still intractable tradeoffs and details that have to be dealt with...in this case, security.