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Playing a guitar is not 1000x harder than programming.

eternityforest 5y ago
Maybe that's an exaggeration but t definitely seems like a whole order of magnitude extra difficulty. If you play a wrong note, you can slow down and practice more. If you do it ten times and still get it wrong... all you can really do is... just practice more. How long will it take? Who knows? It's like programming for a computer that randomly inserts errors on 1%-5% of lines. With programming, there is near zero challenge to implement something. Once you know what the bug is, you almost always know how to fix it, and are able to do so. And once it's fixed, it stays fixed. The whole industry has collectively worked for decades to move as much of the work out of the coder's head and onto the CPU. With any other activity, understanding means basically nothing. You have to somehow get your hand to physically do it. And you have to be able to remember the whole thing. You have to learn one part, and then learn the next part. But if you forget the first part you have to completely start over, and none of it goes anywhere unless you know it all at once. With programming... I have no idea how the code I wrote a month ago works. I might not look at it for a year. It's done, I've moved on, no ability to put anything beyond the most vague overview in long term memory is required. I have no idea how people do ANY real life activity to a professional level. Programming seems like not a challenge at all compared to even normal everyday things, even grade school level math, or any other occupation. Even being a cashier requires being able to see the number on the screen, figure out how many dimes and how many quarters that is, all in just a few seconds, then physically count them out, with close to zero error rate. You could be fired at 5% wrong change complaints. An accountant could probably be in trouble if they wrote down the wrong number 0.5% of the time or less. Programming is one of the only professions that has the ability to retry your basic mistakes. Every other activity relies on some inherent capacity to practice and become reliable at something.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  As someone who programs, plays guitar and has worked as a cashier, being a cashier is by far the easiest. A month or two of working as a cashier with some focused attention to efficiency and memorization will put you ahead of 90% of working cashiers. Between guitar and programming, I would say that guitar is easier to get a basic proficiency at, though much harder to do at a professional level. I think that is largely due to supply and demand. There are very few jobs available for guitarists who are merely proficient, while there plenty of jobs for proficient programmers. The ability to try things and make mistakes without consequences definitely helps to make programming easier, but it will only get you so far. There just isn't enough time in the day to program purely through trial-and-error.
  - eternityforest 5y ago
    I've been trying to get better at guitar on and off for more than a decade, and almost all my jobs have had lots of incidental noncode work. Even learning a simple 4 chord campfires song is on a level of difficulty with a small production ready app, and the incidental work My favorite story about this is that one year I found that I had left my keys in the front door and gone inside. I made it my top priority to learn to not do this. I programmed by phone to play a voice reminder when i connected to wifi after getting home. Sometimes I'd get up at 3AM in a panic and run to check if i left them there. After a few months of this, I did the same exact thing at work. I never did find a way to gain that skill to a totally reliable degree, I just used lanyards and Tile tracking. Non programming activities are almost 100% things like that. Stuff where you have nothing to rely on but your own brain and body, and if you hit a wall and find yourself unable to improve it takes months to make small gains. Unless you're born with a natural talent for learning simple patterns reliably... that's where a lot of of the real challenge of life is. You can't completely program by trial and error, but you can program 10% by trial and error and 90% by actually getting it right. There's no requirement for consistency. Minor mistakes are just 10 minute delays, so if you make 3 or 4 typos a day and have to wait for a compile to spot them, you can still be an above average programmer. If you mess up making change that often(Which you probably will, unless you can reliably count to 5 every time in a fast environment), you'll be fired. If you mess up that often while driving or as a pharmacist, people will probably literally die.

Maybe that's an exaggeration but t definitely seems like a whole order of magnitude extra difficulty. If you play a wrong note, you can slow down and practice more. If you do it ten times and still get it wrong... all you can really do is... just practice more. How long will it take? Who knows? It's like programming for a computer that randomly inserts errors on 1%-5% of lines. With programming, there is near zero challenge to implement something. Once you know what the bug is, you almost always know how to fix it, and are able to do so. And once it's fixed, it stays fixed. The whole industry has collectively worked for decades to move as much of the work out of the coder's head and onto the CPU. With any other activity, understanding means basically nothing. You have to somehow get your hand to physically do it. And you have to be able to remember the whole thing. You have to learn one part, and then learn the next part. But if you forget the first part you have to completely start over, and none of it goes anywhere unless you know it all at once. With programming... I have no idea how the code I wrote a month ago works. I might not look at it for a year. It's done, I've moved on, no ability to put anything beyond the most vague overview in long term memory is required. I have no idea how people do ANY real life activity to a professional level. Programming seems like not a challenge at all compared to even normal everyday things, even grade school level math, or any other occupation. Even being a cashier requires being able to see the number on the screen, figure out how many dimes and how many quarters that is, all in just a few seconds, then physically count them out, with close to zero error rate. You could be fired at 5% wrong change complaints. An accountant could probably be in trouble if they wrote down the wrong number 0.5% of the time or less. Programming is one of the only professions that has the ability to retry your basic mistakes. Every other activity relies on some inherent capacity to practice and become reliable at something.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
As someone who programs, plays guitar and has worked as a cashier, being a cashier is by far the easiest. A month or two of working as a cashier with some focused attention to efficiency and memorization will put you ahead of 90% of working cashiers. Between guitar and programming, I would say that guitar is easier to get a basic proficiency at, though much harder to do at a professional level. I think that is largely due to supply and demand. There are very few jobs available for guitarists who are merely proficient, while there plenty of jobs for proficient programmers. The ability to try things and make mistakes without consequences definitely helps to make programming easier, but it will only get you so far. There just isn't enough time in the day to program purely through trial-and-error.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I've been trying to get better at guitar on and off for more than a decade, and almost all my jobs have had lots of incidental noncode work. Even learning a simple 4 chord campfires song is on a level of difficulty with a small production ready app, and the incidental work My favorite story about this is that one year I found that I had left my keys in the front door and gone inside. I made it my top priority to learn to not do this. I programmed by phone to play a voice reminder when i connected to wifi after getting home. Sometimes I'd get up at 3AM in a panic and run to check if i left them there. After a few months of this, I did the same exact thing at work. I never did find a way to gain that skill to a totally reliable degree, I just used lanyards and Tile tracking. Non programming activities are almost 100% things like that. Stuff where you have nothing to rely on but your own brain and body, and if you hit a wall and find yourself unable to improve it takes months to make small gains. Unless you're born with a natural talent for learning simple patterns reliably... that's where a lot of of the real challenge of life is. You can't completely program by trial and error, but you can program 10% by trial and error and 90% by actually getting it right. There's no requirement for consistency. Minor mistakes are just 10 minute delays, so if you make 3 or 4 typos a day and have to wait for a compile to spot them, you can still be an above average programmer. If you mess up making change that often(Which you probably will, unless you can reliably count to 5 every time in a fast environment), you'll be fired. If you mess up that often while driving or as a pharmacist, people will probably literally die.