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There is another kind of "hard" though, which involves managing growing code bases, doing programming within a business setting, and so on. We mostly let the sc
by mbrock 11y ago
There is another kind of "hard" though, which involves managing growing code bases, doing programming within a business setting, and so on. We mostly let the scientists work on well-defined problems in isolation, so they can really focus on those deeply intellectually challenging things, but even if those scientists are very clever I don't think they are necessarily good at larger-scale system development.
There are lots of jobs that are harder than mine in some sense, but if you look at the objective of building high-quality complex software in the minimum amount of time, keeping it running correctly, and then being able to change that software as effectively as possible, then that in itself is pretty much an infinite problem. Maybe there is lots of scientific work to be done to help us struggling coders, and maybe we need to get our shit together more as a profession... It's not all easy.
- rpgmaker 11y ago> but if you look at the objective of building high-quality complex software in the minimum amount of time, keeping it running correctly, and then being able to change that software as effectively as possible, then that in itself is pretty much an infinite problem. The same can be said of almost any "high-quality complex" project in any other profession.
- mbrock 11y agoAgreed. It's interesting to compare software with other "intellectual labor" like law, government, writing, architecture, philosophy, accounting, and so on. Many of the same problems seem to come up. Programming as a profession is very young, though.