> everyone else is "difficult." Programmers find themselves in the position of "managing" the most difficult possible sort of subordinate - the computer itself

> everyone else is "difficult." Programmers find themselves in the position of "managing" the most difficult possible sort of subordinate - the computer itself. It doesn't care what you want. It doesn't care about your deadlines. It does _exactly_ what you told it to do, and if you told it the wrong thing, it will do that anyway and it's entirely your problem to figure out which part was wrong. No "people manager" could put up with such an obstinate employee, but doing so is literally our job description, and occasionally we have to report back up that we still haven't figured out why the computer is being "difficult" - and then we get blamed for that difficulty.