3 ms·

While I somewhat admire the author feelings, as a direct answer to the chosen title, I have to say I don't share them at all. I view programming with a mix of i

by brmgb 6y ago

While I somewhat admire the author feelings, as a direct answer to the chosen title, I have to say I don't share them at all. I view programming with a mix of indifference and boredom and the sad few years I had to do it as a job are easily the less fulfilling of my life. If I had to sum up my feelings regarding programming, I would say it is: - a lot of uninteresting busy work; - intellectually mostly unchallenging. The few parts that are actually interesting are maths and if I wanted to maths I personally find that there are more interesting problems to solve in parts of maths not related to programming. I don't remember ever feeling any joy after completing a piece of software; - extremely isolating; - both boring and infuriating to debug when it's needed. The only positive part was shipping something useful when it was finished.

chubot 6y ago
I felt that way after a few years of programming. I was bad at debugging and several other things that would have made my life a lot easier. After a decade of programming, I got better at it, and started to like it more (even doing it in my spare time) People like things they are good at. To be provocative: if you only did it for a few years, you probably weren't that good at it. The same can be said for math, playing guitar, etc. Guitar is a good example. Anyone who has been playing for a year or 3 probably knows the drudgery of practicing some chords that don't sound like what's on the record, hurting your fingers, etc. When you get good at it, the drudgery goes away and you're left with fun. And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven't explored yet. If you like math then there is a ton of stuff in programming that's mathematical, but you can't get a job in those areas until you've mastered the basics.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I agree that people like things they're good at, but a few years is far longer than you need to get good at something. You can easily get to at least the top 10-20th percentile in a single year if you dedicate yourself to something.
- brmgb 6y ago
  > And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven't explored yet. > If you like math then there is a ton of stuff in programming that's mathematical, but you can't get a job in those areas until you've mastered the basics. I don't think you understand my point. While I don't think I am exceptionally good, I am not a twenty two years old junior. I have a MSc in Computer Science from a (very) good university and an actual engineering degree. I can debug. I was developing real time simulators of complex networked equipments in a safety critical environment. I (thankfully) wasn't doing CRUD business software. Let me illustrate my point with a story. I once spent three days trying to understand what wasn't working in some random network code in Ada using gdb and tcpdump because I wasn't allowed to install wireshark on these machines. In the end I realized there was a massive bug the version of the GNAT standard library we were using. Sockets were always bound to all addresses rather than the specified ip. I then had to write a work around because we absolutely couldn't update. And you know how I felt after that? Not clever. I felt sad, bored and like if I had forever lost a week of my life (which I had actually). Thankfully the project became bigger not long after and from then on I was able to spend more time managing the team and the project and didn't have to code much anymore. Gosh I hate coding. My points regarding maths is not that you can't do mathematically oriented programing. It is that there is far more interesting problem in pure maths that have nothing to do with computers. Nowadays, I work in management consulting on problems I actually find interesting and which thankfully involve more people than machines. I was just sharing to give some perspective to the article. Some people actually deeply dislike programming.
  - chubot 6y ago
    OK, well it's great you found something you like, and I don't doubt that there are people who can program who don't like it. I would still claim that just like guitar, it may get more fun with practice, and that practice may take years. Even if you're working on some old legacy system, being the person who can make it sing is pretty fun IMO. Actually I find the legacy stuff to be more interesting because it actually runs and does things in the world. BTW I also found that those kind of debugging sessions went down drastically in frequency in a ~14 year career of programming. (We had multi-week, multi-engineer bugs at my first job in games.) The industry changed its practices significantly, and I also changed my personal practices. It only takes a few experiences like that to reflect on what could have gone differently. Sometimes they are out of your control, but often not. --- edit: If this helps make the point more succinctly, I will also say I was mathematically oriented, and had a masters and BS in engineering from a good university. And I worked on a small team shipping major console games ... and despite that, I got drastically better at debugging and testing in the next 10+ years. (Debugging being the most literally scientific part of programming; I was better at math than science.) Actually the experience of working with game programmers taught me how bad I was at debugging. There's also a lot to learn about software architecture for reducing bugs. If you get infuriated frequently by debugging, then there are things you can do to change that. Of course you may not want to if you've found other things you like.
bitwise-and 6y ago
Maybe it was what you were working on, maybe it was the act of programming itself, maybe it was the company, etc. etc. etc., for the sake of your own happiness I'm glad you're not doing that anymore. I for one and becoming more and more fascinated by it, despite its (MANY) quirks & decisions that get made because of previous bad decisions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ericd 6y ago
Maybe the thing you were working on wasn’t interesting enough to you? If I’m working on something really hard that I think is cool, the intermediate steps are a joyful rush when they work out. If I’m working on something like pulling data from yet another endpoint, not so much. Might be worth looking around for problems that actually excite you.
amelius 6y ago
> a lot of uninteresting busy work; - intellectually mostly unchallenging My guess is that you should have followed your programmer's instincts and automated the uninteresting work.

by brmgb 6y ago

chubot 6y ago

I felt that way after a few years of programming. I was bad at debugging and several other things that would have made my life a lot easier. After a decade of programming, I got better at it, and started to like it more (even doing it in my spare time) People like things they are good at. To be provocative: if you only did it for a few years, you probably weren't that good at it. The same can be said for math, playing guitar, etc. Guitar is a good example. Anyone who has been playing for a year or 3 probably knows the drudgery of practicing some chords that don't sound like what's on the record, hurting your fingers, etc. When you get good at it, the drudgery goes away and you're left with fun. And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven't explored yet. If you like math then there is a ton of stuff in programming that's mathematical, but you can't get a job in those areas until you've mastered the basics.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I agree that people like things they're good at, but a few years is far longer than you need to get good at something. You can easily get to at least the top 10-20th percentile in a single year if you dedicate yourself to something.
brmgb 6y ago
> And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven't explored yet. > If you like math then there is a ton of stuff in programming that's mathematical, but you can't get a job in those areas until you've mastered the basics. I don't think you understand my point. While I don't think I am exceptionally good, I am not a twenty two years old junior. I have a MSc in Computer Science from a (very) good university and an actual engineering degree. I can debug. I was developing real time simulators of complex networked equipments in a safety critical environment. I (thankfully) wasn't doing CRUD business software. Let me illustrate my point with a story. I once spent three days trying to understand what wasn't working in some random network code in Ada using gdb and tcpdump because I wasn't allowed to install wireshark on these machines. In the end I realized there was a massive bug the version of the GNAT standard library we were using. Sockets were always bound to all addresses rather than the specified ip. I then had to write a work around because we absolutely couldn't update. And you know how I felt after that? Not clever. I felt sad, bored and like if I had forever lost a week of my life (which I had actually). Thankfully the project became bigger not long after and from then on I was able to spend more time managing the team and the project and didn't have to code much anymore. Gosh I hate coding. My points regarding maths is not that you can't do mathematically oriented programing. It is that there is far more interesting problem in pure maths that have nothing to do with computers. Nowadays, I work in management consulting on problems I actually find interesting and which thankfully involve more people than machines. I was just sharing to give some perspective to the article. Some people actually deeply dislike programming.
- chubot 6y ago
  OK, well it's great you found something you like, and I don't doubt that there are people who can program who don't like it. I would still claim that just like guitar, it may get more fun with practice, and that practice may take years. Even if you're working on some old legacy system, being the person who can make it sing is pretty fun IMO. Actually I find the legacy stuff to be more interesting because it actually runs and does things in the world. BTW I also found that those kind of debugging sessions went down drastically in frequency in a ~14 year career of programming. (We had multi-week, multi-engineer bugs at my first job in games.) The industry changed its practices significantly, and I also changed my personal practices. It only takes a few experiences like that to reflect on what could have gone differently. Sometimes they are out of your control, but often not. --- edit: If this helps make the point more succinctly, I will also say I was mathematically oriented, and had a masters and BS in engineering from a good university. And I worked on a small team shipping major console games ... and despite that, I got drastically better at debugging and testing in the next 10+ years. (Debugging being the most literally scientific part of programming; I was better at math than science.) Actually the experience of working with game programmers taught me how bad I was at debugging. There's also a lot to learn about software architecture for reducing bugs. If you get infuriated frequently by debugging, then there are things you can do to change that. Of course you may not want to if you've found other things you like.

bitwise-and 6y ago

Maybe it was what you were working on, maybe it was the act of programming itself, maybe it was the company, etc. etc. etc., for the sake of your own happiness I'm glad you're not doing that anymore. I for one and becoming more and more fascinated by it, despite its (MANY) quirks & decisions that get made because of previous bad decisions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ericd 6y ago

Maybe the thing you were working on wasn’t interesting enough to you? If I’m working on something really hard that I think is cool, the intermediate steps are a joyful rush when they work out. If I’m working on something like pulling data from yet another endpoint, not so much. Might be worth looking around for problems that actually excite you.

amelius 6y ago

> a lot of uninteresting busy work; - intellectually mostly unchallenging My guess is that you should have followed your programmer's instincts and automated the uninteresting work.