I love this short post. Software development is fundamentally hard, despite many frequent statements to the contrary by the "everyone should be a programmer" f

I love this short post. Software development is fundamentally hard, despite many frequent statements to the contrary by the "everyone should be a programmer" folks. It requires uncommon persistence, and a love (if not an aptitude) of abstract reasoning in pure form. I think the thought process goes like this: "What's he doing?" "He's doing THAT!?" "Why?!" "I don't understand why." "This software is garbage." Some people claim to be able to glance at code and know what it's doing quickly, but it's just not possible to ingest a few thousand lines of self-referencing logic and understand it quickly if it is doing much more than shuttling data between a database and some kind of display rendering. If you've learned to program, you must have learned patience for yourself. You have to show that same patience to the authors of other programs if you want to understand their work. There are many thoughts embedded in their code. It is deeply complex as the person who wrote it.