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I disagree, GP is absolutely correct. The reason people think that programming or software engineering is hard is because they were told that it is hard. US and

I disagree, GP is absolutely correct. The reason people think that programming or software engineering is hard is because they were told that it is hard. US and the West in general has this strange culture where those that are supposed to know (teachers, parents, professors) like to tell those who are learning (students, children, etc) that whatever is done is hard. Math, apparently, is hard. Algebra is hard. Trigonometry is hard. Geography is hard. Physics is hard. It does not matter what it is - if it is worth doing it is all "hard". Students that "get it" are the ones who managed to ignore the "hard" label. That's it. In the industry I keep hearing that everything is hard: Dev: "Logging is a solved problem at the rate we are looking at - it is what, 100 messages per second?" VP of Eng: "I dont know man. Logging is hard. We should outsource it." SRE: "Just build images and spin them up" CTO: "That's hard. We should outsource it" Dev: "Lets fix this reliability issue. We keep getting disconnects and it does something wacky to our API" CTO/VP Eng: "That's hard. Lets just see if we can spin up enough instances not to notice" Most of stuff that we do is not hard.

mrguyorama 9y ago
I completely disagree. Every single subject I've ever struggled with in a school setting was described to me as "No don't worry, it's actually really easy" which was a problem. If I'm struggling to understand something that is so easy, maybe I'm just dumb.
ryanianian 9y ago
Algebra is hard - it's an abstract problem-space. It takes learning problem-solving! I've seen brilliant middle-school kids struggle with it because it's a way of thinking that has to be learned. Don't cut yourself or others short by saying these things you think are easy are easy by their very nature. Doing any of those things you describe with effectively in a mid/large-scale engineering organization with many competing tech priorities is not something an amateur or simpleton could do with any real success. I can put seeds in the ground, but that doesn't make me a farmer. But also - maybe larger point - many of the things that are not coding/math/science are also quite hard. My father fixed auto-bodies for a living and he made some incredibly difficult, detail-oriented, craftsmanship tasks look dumb-simple. He asked me to tape off a car once so it could be painted - something he thought a 13 year old should be able to do because it was "so easy" was a complete disaster. He forgot how second-nature it had become to him. So..just because you think it's easy doesn't mean it is. And just because it's hard doesn't mean it's fairly characterized in popular-opinion as being as hard as it actually is.
elihu 9y ago
I think software development is hard, but not because the subject matter is intrinsically difficult. (Sometimes it is, but usually that's not the primary reason.) It's hard because we've invented a mountain of little annoying problems with little annoying workarounds and it takes decades to learn most of them in any particular domain.

mrguyorama 9y ago

I completely disagree. Every single subject I've ever struggled with in a school setting was described to me as "No don't worry, it's actually really easy" which was a problem. If I'm struggling to understand something that is so easy, maybe I'm just dumb.

ryanianian 9y ago

Algebra is hard - it's an abstract problem-space. It takes learning problem-solving! I've seen brilliant middle-school kids struggle with it because it's a way of thinking that has to be learned. Don't cut yourself or others short by saying these things you think are easy are easy by their very nature. Doing any of those things you describe with effectively in a mid/large-scale engineering organization with many competing tech priorities is not something an amateur or simpleton could do with any real success. I can put seeds in the ground, but that doesn't make me a farmer. But also - maybe larger point - many of the things that are not coding/math/science are also quite hard. My father fixed auto-bodies for a living and he made some incredibly difficult, detail-oriented, craftsmanship tasks look dumb-simple. He asked me to tape off a car once so it could be painted - something he thought a 13 year old should be able to do because it was "so easy" was a complete disaster. He forgot how second-nature it had become to him. So..just because you think it's easy doesn't mean it is. And just because it's hard doesn't mean it's fairly characterized in popular-opinion as being as hard as it actually is.

elihu 9y ago

I think software development is hard, but not because the subject matter is intrinsically difficult. (Sometimes it is, but usually that's not the primary reason.) It's hard because we've invented a mountain of little annoying problems with little annoying workarounds and it takes decades to learn most of them in any particular domain.