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That is a good question. I'm not sure how well I will be able to put it into words, but I'll give it a go! For what it is worth, I have a grain farm, so my pers

That is a good question. I'm not sure how well I will be able to put it into words, but I'll give it a go! For what it is worth, I have a grain farm, so my perspective comes from that type of operation. A big one is simply the breadth of the subject matter. To me it feels like learning to program, forgetting everything, and repeating several more times. You have to know about plants, chemicals, machinery, computer technology, business, just to name a few. I don't think you need to be a expert in any of those things, but it seems to me like the most successful farmers approach being that. Every year is different. If you've built one CRUD app, every CRUD app is going to come with a similar set of problems. If you've grown one field of corn, who knows what next year will bring? I've been farming for more than a decade now and I still encounter situations that I've never seen before. Luckily, which makes it much less of a challenge, but might be interesting being that I'm the sixth generation to work my family's farm, I can ask family for advice and you get the "Well, back in '72 it was like this and we did that." Still, there is lots of problem solving to do. In that respect, it is a lot like programming. What is not not like programming is an answer for everything on the internet. I truly miss that. While programming, if I have any kind of mental block, a few minutes on Google will turn me right around. On the farm, family is an amazing resource, and there are plenty of academic and other professionals available to be contacted, but it's not the same. Programmers are incredibly fortunate! I'll just throw in that farming constantly makes me feel dumb. Still, after a decade at it. Not very quantitate, I know, but it's a feeling I have never experienced in the same way as a programmer. I'm sure I could go on, but I have to move on to other engagements. I hope you found this interesting.

ryanianian 9y ago
Thank you very much for the thoughtful response! The parallels are interesting. Farming sounds a lot like writing assembly! Start over every time, have to know about wildly arcane and disparate concepts, hard to get help except from somebody who has encountered something very similar perhaps a long time ago, and takes many years to feel productive.

ryanianian 9y ago

Thank you very much for the thoughtful response! The parallels are interesting. Farming sounds a lot like writing assembly! Start over every time, have to know about wildly arcane and disparate concepts, hard to get help except from somebody who has encountered something very similar perhaps a long time ago, and takes many years to feel productive.