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I don't think you understood the post. I used to be one of those people in that quote - I found programming too simple/easy, and ended up doing math and physic

by Bahamut 10y ago

I don't think you understood the post. I used to be one of those people in that quote - I found programming too simple/easy, and ended up doing math and physics, subject matters of far more complexity. I only ended up programming because I needed work afrer grad school and after 2 1/2 years of job searching, I got lucky and someone took a chance. To this day I continue to be happy about my line of work - it isn't particularly difficult (frontend web development primarily), but it lets me solve little problems and keep my mind engaged while paying exceedingly well. The perspective shift from being unemployed with dubious prospects makes me not care about how I am relative to the rest (although in my domain, it turns out to compare very favorably).

ThePhysicist 10y ago
I really don't think that it's possible to rank disciplines like math, physics or computer science by complexity and say "physics is so much more complex than computer science". There might be areas of physics that are very complex, like string theory (which probably belongs more to mathematics though), but there are also very complex and hard problems in computer science (or even programming!) that no one was able to solve effectively up to this day: As an example, we're still struggling to design a programming language that is easy to learn and use and at the same time efficient and safe. And I think if we took 100 string theorists and put them up to the challenge of building such a language there is a very small likelihood that they would succeed (I even think there is a large probability that they would scr*w it up in a spectacular way). I worked in quantum physics myself and have a PhD in experimental quantum computing, but still I consider writing good and reliable software a tremendous challenge, and often I initially fail at it when building large projects. I'm now mostly working on data analysis and static code analysis, and I consider these two fields to be at least as complex and stimulating as my earlier work. I think what we as programmers need to realize is that we're not better (or worse) than anyone else just because we can write software, and we also need to realize that building anything usually requires people with a variety of skills, both technical and non-technical. Most of our work would be entirely useless on its own, it just derives meaning within the context where it's used. Therefore, in my opinion the real "10x" programmers are not only those that can churn out brilliant code at an amazing pace, but those that understand their own work in the context of the project that this work supports, are able to effectively and efficiently work with everyone else on the team to support it, and do not have a mental ranking of job professions that classifies people into "high" and "low".

by Bahamut 10y ago

ThePhysicist 10y ago

I really don't think that it's possible to rank disciplines like math, physics or computer science by complexity and say "physics is so much more complex than computer science". There might be areas of physics that are very complex, like string theory (which probably belongs more to mathematics though), but there are also very complex and hard problems in computer science (or even programming!) that no one was able to solve effectively up to this day: As an example, we're still struggling to design a programming language that is easy to learn and use and at the same time efficient and safe. And I think if we took 100 string theorists and put them up to the challenge of building such a language there is a very small likelihood that they would succeed (I even think there is a large probability that they would scr*w it up in a spectacular way). I worked in quantum physics myself and have a PhD in experimental quantum computing, but still I consider writing good and reliable software a tremendous challenge, and often I initially fail at it when building large projects. I'm now mostly working on data analysis and static code analysis, and I consider these two fields to be at least as complex and stimulating as my earlier work. I think what we as programmers need to realize is that we're not better (or worse) than anyone else just because we can write software, and we also need to realize that building anything usually requires people with a variety of skills, both technical and non-technical. Most of our work would be entirely useless on its own, it just derives meaning within the context where it's used. Therefore, in my opinion the real "10x" programmers are not only those that can churn out brilliant code at an amazing pace, but those that understand their own work in the context of the project that this work supports, are able to effectively and efficiently work with everyone else on the team to support it, and do not have a mental ranking of job professions that classifies people into "high" and "low".