This is HN, I'm going to kill a joke instead: There is the classic: There are only two hard problems in computer science: Cache invalidation, naming things...

This is HN, I'm going to kill a joke instead: There is the classic: There are only two hard problems in computer science: Cache invalidation, naming things... and off-by-one errors! Ha ha ha I hate this joke. It takes one of the most insightful things ever said about the profession, makes it into a joke that isn't even that good, and now the only thing you rememebr about it is the punchline. Let's break it down: - Cache invalidation: State management! Distributed systems! This really gets to the core of what's hard. This is the only technical problem. For everything else you will have all the information you need at hand and it's a matter of getting the machine to do your bidding. - Naming things: Communication! Dealing with people, whether it's you in the future or somebody else in the present is not a technical problem, but it is an even more important problem. It's unsolved. You will need to practice, think, fail, try more, and it's not even guaranteed to succeed. People are like that. It's a hard problem. So there you have it. Probably the most insightful thing said about our job in less than fifteen words, and if you hear it, the "joke" immediately makes you think about the punchline, robbing you of the opportunity of reflecting about it.