Programming Isn't Manual Labor, but It Still Sucks

http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/

by fredkelly • 11 years ago

14 5 11 years ago

spotman• 11 years ago

There is a time when I would have agreed more heavily with this article. However, I have grown up a bit. If your not enjoying your job, find a different one.

Yes, there is parts of the job to dislike. But its possible to arrange yourself in the scene where that is minimized. If you take out some of the negatives, and you still don't actually enjoy the task of developing and debugging and supporting software, then its probably the wrong career for you.

Some of the examples the author lists like dealing with awful error messages, or the snow flake / shoveling snow are things that I have truly come to enjoy about the job. At some point after many years of experience you get better at avoiding situations, and therefore get better at writing more useful error messages and software structure. But there is always going to be fresh blood, code that is overly complex or poorly thought out if you stay in the industry long enough.

There is something I find truly satisfying helping teams evolve from shoveling snow in their picasso-esque unorganized pit of despair, to winding up on the other side of the fence, with a functioning, maintainable codebase and many contributors contributing in a positive way. This too - this evolution of improvement, is another part of the job to enjoy.

If you don't learn to take some level of satisfaction out of these more negative times, you will, as the author said work 15 hour days and feel like satan is dining out of your skull.

In other cases, if you put yourself in a situation where you are completely irreplaceable and indispensable, that is another thing that you have to learn to avoid. While this can feel really validating and positive because you get a lot of "well we better hand it to Bob, he is the only one that can fix this!", you should enjoy the spotlight, while simultaneously figuring out how to make yourself replicated and not a single point of failure. Sometimes this involves hiring people, sometimes it involves training people on your team to improve so that the work load is spread. If your in a situation like this you simply can't escape, its possible its an unhealthy situation, and you should really ask yourself why you put up with it for more than a short burst here and there.

In any case, there is always going to be parts where you feel like satan is dining in your skull. But with any luck and perseverance these shouldn't be the job description, in my opinion.

_random_• 11 years ago

Manual labour is for weak-AI robots.

rumcajz• 11 years ago

Wild West was a pretty shitty place to live in, but still some people enjoyed it and thrived there. Internet isn't much better, I guess, but yes, some people love the chaos and the raw challenge it presents and wouldn't trade it for anything else.

nattaggart• 11 years ago

The first photo in this article pretty much sums it up: someone echoing "banana" to debug PHP. Nailed my life.

Advice to author: learn to stop worrying and love the bomb :)

fredkelly• 11 years ago

hehe, good spot!

Programming Isn't Manual Labor, but It Still Sucks

Related Stories