this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
189 points (95.7% liked)

Programming

17352 readers
299 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.
(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (6 children)

As a non-dev (tinker for fun) observer- it sounds like your friends and family think you're working in IT, but their assumptions thereafter are fair. Is that accurate? That the misconception is software dev does not equal IT?

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago

That the business idea, the design, the architecture, and code for the next multimillion dollar app is just sitting in my head waiting for the next guy with enough motivation to extract from me.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Just 2 days ago some friends thought that I could get any job from the huge pool of available jobs out there...

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

I mean the classic is that you must be "really good at computers" like I'm okay at debugging, just by being methodical, but if you plop me in front of a Windows desktop and ask me to fix your printer; brother, I haven't fucked with any of those 3 things in over a decade.

I would be as a baby, learning everything anew, to solve your problem.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

fuck you. my uncle was a dot matrix.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I enjoy your comment so much because your methodical and patient approach to debugging code is exactly what's required to fix a printer. You literally are really good at computers even if your aren't armed with a lot of specific knowledge. It's the absolutely worst because troubleshooting without knowledge and experience is painfully slow and the whole time I'm thinking"they know so much more about this than I do! If they'd just slow down and read what's on the screen ..." But many people struggle to do even basic troubleshooting. Their lack of what you have makes them inept.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

I was gonna say, the OP here sounds perfectly good at computers. Most people either have so little knowledge they can't even start on solving their printer problem no matter what, or don't have the problem solving mindset needed to search for and try different things until they find the actual solution.

There's a reason why specific knowledge beyond the basic concepts is rarely a hard requirement in software. The learning and problem solving abilities are way more important.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago

After doing it for 15 years, I must be good at it and everything should be easy.

hidethepainharold.jpg

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›