IANAL, obviously. 1) these are not very uncommon, in my experience they're pretty normal 2) if you tell them about your friend's experience, and explain that

IANAL, obviously. 1) these are not very uncommon, in my experience they're pretty normal 2) if you tell them about your friend's experience, and explain that you're willing not to work with a direct competitor but you will need to make it clear you still can seek employment as a programmer so this needs to be narrowed, they should be willing to modify the language 3) if they say "my way or the highway", even after sharing your friend's experience, that tells you something about them as a potential employer 4) but from their point of view, developers get to look at a lot of the innards of the company, and they aren't crazy or mean to want some protection from you just walking away with a lot of the value of the company in the form of IP, trade secrets, etc.