3 ms·
Programming may still be hard, but it certainly has become less mathematical and less low-level, therefore more accessible. I recall that people talked more abo
by hintymad 6y ago
Programming may still be hard, but it certainly has become less mathematical and less low-level, therefore more accessible. I recall that people talked more about Knuth's books, compilers, and OS before 2010. We have less such discussion now. Similarly, people talked a lot more about consistent hashing algorithms, log-structured merge tree, merkel tree, B+-tree, and etc in the early 2010s. I used to read Hacker's Delight and find it useful in my daily work, but not any more. As times goes by, "hard" concepts and algorithms are packaged into well-designed products, and engineers will focus on building products. The complexity can still be there, but they don't necessary have to do with hardcore programming concepts.
- hvocode 6y agoThat’s a good observation: I think you’ve observed not a change in programming itself, but a shift in the kinds of things large numbers of programmers are building that get talked about on sites like this. Other forums that I track still talk about the deeper aspects of programming, which reflects more on the community and it’s interests than it does any fundamental change in how hard programming is.
- fsociety 6y agoIf you don't mind sharing which forums?