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But then, can't you do "boring and repetitive stuff" faster with higher order functions, metaprogramming etc.? I'm not a professional developer and I occasiona
by thanatropism 7y ago
But then, can't you do "boring and repetitive stuff" faster with higher order functions, metaprogramming etc.?
I'm not a professional developer and I occasionally look at it as a potential career (I have a plausible history with programming and have been called to interviews), but the idea that most programming is "repetitive" boggles me. I mean, if you literally have to type things over and over, can't you program it somehow?
- _ph_ 7y agoSorry, that was not meant entirely seriously. Of course, a good programmer would try to reduce the amount of (boring) work as much as possible and high level programming languages like Lisp can help alot with that. But there are also programming jobs, where you are set for a certain programming language and are forced to do pretty boring stuff all over again - as the job requires it. These jobs should be avoided by those who like exploration and interesting stuff :).
- thanatropism 7y agoCan you give me some examples of repetitive (or very boring) kinds of programming work that's commonly demanded? (This isn't a skeptic take, I've been really pondering whether coding is for me, since taking the next step in my current career path requires an upgrade in "soft skills" that... )
- srazzaque 7y agoIn banks, a lot of the important operations are on entrenched/Legacy systems (eg mainframes) or vendor/cots solutions. Therefore for some developers in a bank, a lot of work tends to focus on shovelling data around the bank in a myriad of formats to interact with these systems, or get data in and out of databases.
- kian 7y agoThis a thousand times. If you're writing something over and over again in slightly different guises, you're either doing it wrong or using poor tools.