Programming

I've got a lot of these.

Programming is not doing leetcode problems all day long. Those problems can be a good brain exercise or a good prep for a [misguided] technical interview but in a real programming job you have next to no chance of running into problems like those. Even if you do, you're an idiot if you spend hours toiling away at a problem that somebody else already solved much more efficiently than you will. Your boss doesn't give a crap if you pulled all of the code straight from your brain.

Programmers are not hackers. The reverse might be true but hacking is about finding problems (and exploiting them) while programming is about fixing problems.

A programmer can do anything that involves code. Maybe not quite this succinct but I think most will assume you can write a mobile app or a website just because you say you can code. Websites, games, apps, and so on are written in code but they all involve different technologies, toolsets, and standards. I'm sure I could fumble my way through any kind of software but don't expect it done quickly if it's not my area of expertise.

This one's a hot take, but: That Python is easy.

I've had to work with it in three projects in the past five years and I consider it one of the hardest programming languages, for anything but very short scripts.

You don't get proper compiler assistance, unless you have 100% test coverage. You don't get a helpful text editor. You don't usually get helpful type hints in libraries you use, so you have to genuinely just study the documentation and/or code. You get tons of quirky behavior in the stdlib, build tools, async stack, imports. You get breaking changes in minor versions of the language.

I find writing code in Python extremely mentally taxing, because you just get so little assistance, that you have to think of everything yourself.

That if you know how to code, you understand how computers work and understand really complicated math concepts.

Programming != Computer Science. Programming is just a tool used in computer science. Computer Science is so much more and follows scientific theory and methodology.

"We're going to clean up that code later."

It is cool

It is fun

That programming as a career means you're going to spend writing nice, clean code 80% of the time.

It's rather debugging code or tooling problems 50% of the time, talking to other people (whether necessary or not) about 35% of the time and the rest may be spent on actually spending time doing the thing you actually enjoy.

I may be exaggerating, but only a little.

Thar just because you solved a particular problem in 10min, all other problems are going to take 10min too.

Everyone can code.

That coding interviews are even by the tiniest measure good indicators of how capable a candidate is for a software engineering job.

I saw a great thread on Mastodon about this: link

That you can just go to a bootcamp, and be good at or naturally suited for it.

That you can go to college and get a degree, and be good at or naturally suited for it.