this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Programming

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As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren't as familiar with it. It doesn't happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.

  • I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Programming and Software Engineering are related, but distinct fields. Programming is relatively easy, Software Engineering is a bit harder and requires more discipline in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

that programmers make $300-500k/year

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

That you can mix and match bugfixes like lego blocks an hour before release.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

Based on some places I used to work, upper management seemed convinced that the "idea" stage was the hardest and most important part of any project, and that the easy part is planning, gathering requirements, building, testing, changing, and maintaining custom business applications for needlessly complex and ever changing requirements.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can't fault someone for trying to convert digital information into something tangible to visualize it better. Unfortunately peoples brains aren't really built to comprehend a newspaper that weighs almost as much as the moon. (rough estimate I pulled out my ass)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

If this were my grandma, then sure, I wouldn’t fault her. But if it’s someone making life-altering decisions based on their understanding of it, someone who has been doing so for a very long time, and who has support staff who ostensibly try to make sure that person understands the topic at hand, and yet after all these years of hearing about tech-related topics and deciding on them, the person — who has every ability to retire if the world is moving too fast for them to keep up, but has opted not to — asks a question as absurd as this… I actually am going to fault that person.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

I had some dude here trying to tell me, a mathematician and data scientist who is developing AIs for fun and is a holder of an MA in Visual Effects specializing in procedural design, who has worked on algorithmic video game development, what AIs are or are going to be capable of in procedural/generative/algorithmic game design "because he has played a lot of games" and argued for days with me, cherry-picking everything I wrote attempting to use my words refuting him to support his arguments.

Just... Infuriating.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

The files are IN the computer.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago (2 children)

That they have any business telling me how complicated something is or how long something should take for me to implement.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Yeah like "Just add a simple button here". Yeah of course, the button is not the difficult part.

Its like they think we just tell the computer what they asked us to do and we're done.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I was coming here to talk about that recent post saying how easy it is to make a GUI and every program should already have one..

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Command line is a GUI, change my mind

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago

Doesn't happen as much, but family and non tech friends would present me to other people that "worked with computers" thinking I could take new job opportunities. They were always wildly unrelated to my field.

I know I know,.. they acted in good faith, and probably could have adapted a bit, but like 30 years ago there was a lot of overlap and systems where somewhat similar, but now somebody trained in Linux kernel maintenance isn't going to learn how to create SharePoint SPFx webparts. Development is very specific now!

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