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To those not in the IT industry, what do you think programming is like? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 10 months ago by httpjames@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I've always been curious as to what "normal" people think programming is like. The wildest theory I've heard is "typing ones and zeroes" (I'm a software engineer)

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[–] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's pretty much bang on.

You learn pretty fast that you're an idiot and yes, you can write something, read it back many times, and still be wrong.

[–] sunbunman@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hunting that missing semicolon in 500 lines of code qq

[–] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

With that one, at least your parser should crap itself right around where the error is. You probably just need to search engine the error message, and find the page every other noob has to. Then it won't take too long.

If your thing compiles but doesn't work, then the real fun begins. You're in the magical land of Turing completeness, where you hope the problem isn't unsolvable in your case, because it definitely is in general.