so it's second nature to do the mechanical operation of "extend a new class from Widget and add a function that returns the number of pencils pushed", and then somewhat easy after a few years to "pipe the pencil pushing function into the website frontend to display". Even if just describing this to a non SWE would have their eyes glaze over, and a junior SWE would struggle getting things integrated.
The painter metaphor works well here:
>Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”
>“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.
>“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”
(Disclaimer: I do not think Picasso literally said this, but it's a very common tale)
Determining what to program can be hard, but that was already considered earlier.
The only other place where I sometimes see it become hard for some people is where they treat programming as an art and are always going down crazy rabbit holes to chase their artistic vision. Although I would say that isn't so much that programming is hard, but rather art that is trying to push boundaries is hard. That is something that holds regardless of the artistic medium.
That's like saying "becoming a writer can't be that hard, since kids learn how to write in the elementary school".
Given a set of requirements, there are many different ways to write a program to satisfy them. Some of those programs will be more efficient than others. Some will scale better. Some will end up having subtle bugs that are hard to reproduce.
Is writing hard? I expect most can agree that determining what to write, especially if you have an objective (e.g. becoming a best-selling novelist), can be extremely hard — but writing itself?
> there are many different ways to write a program to satisfy them.
"What to program" being hard was accepted from the onset and so far we see no disagreement with that.
Being able to transcribe sentences in a certain language is the skill kids pick up in elementary schools. Being a writer requires a whole set of skills built on top of that.
The reason why I brought up that difference in the first place is because both of these are called "writing". When a fan says "I heard the author is writing the next book in the series" or when an author says "I haven't been able to focus on writing due to my health issues", they're not talking about the low-level transcription skill.
> "What to program" being hard was accepted from the onset and so far we see no disagreement with that.
Similar to your interpretation of "writing", you're choosing to interpret "programming" as a process of transcribing an algorithm into a certain programming language, and everything else ends up being defined as "what to program".
That's an overly reductive interpretation, given the original context:
> For reasons which it would take a while to unpack, if is often the case that the best (or sometimes only) way to find out what programming actually needs to be done, is to program something that's not it, and then replace it. This may need to be done multiple times. Programming is only occasionally the final product, it is much more often the means of working through what it is that is actually needed.
> [...]
> Most of what is being done, during programming, is working through the problem space in a way which will make it more obvious what your mistakes are, in your understanding of the problem and what a solution would look like.
Notice that the original comment talks defines "determining what to program" as a process of refining your understanding of the problem itself.
In my reading of the original comment, understanding what your users need is "what to program". Writing code that solves your users' requirements is "programming".
For me, I need to have a solution figured out before writing code. I am not even sure how you could write code before having the problem solved. Your approach would be insightful.
Like, I get it is effectively impossible to gather all user requirements upfront and that you need to build a product to find out what details you overlooked. That means software is an iterative process. But within each iteration, surely you still need to have the solution — to the extent that it satisfies the known requirements — prepared before you can write code? Maybe if you had an infinite number of monkeys you could have them bang out something that accidentally works by throwing down random keywords, but in the real world where it is only you and your code has to meaningful, what you program is simply the expression of what to program.
Writing code is just means of conveyance, no?
Yes, which is why I have been making the distinction between "programming" and "writing code" all this time.
Programming is hard because it's not merely writing code. Determining what to program is not the same as determining what code to write. "What to program" is about requirements. Going from "what to program" to "what code to write" is what programming is about.
Once your requirements are established there isn't any thing left to choose from, other than maybe whether to use a while loop instead of a for loop — stuff that makes absolutely no difference. The structure of your code, the algorithms you choose, etc. are all dictated by the requirements. So what lies in this nebulous in-between state and what makes it so hard? Is it choosing between for and while what you think is hard?
Only if you expand the meaning of the word "requirements" to encompass a full specification of the solution.
> Is it choosing between for and while what you think is hard?
You want to know what I think? I think this conversation is crossing into rudeness.
They are one in the same, no? Why would one write code that isn't required?
Are you referring to the aforementioned iteration process where the act of writing code and measuring the results will lead to realizing that not all requirements have been gathered? When you start with bubble sort and then users complain that your program is too slow you will realize that you missed that efficiency as a requirement when you were first determining "what to write", sure, but theoretically the requirement was there all along. I don't think when you discover "what to write" really matters with respect to the discussion. The process was understood in the original comment.
We can recognize that transient state where one hypothetically thought bubble sort was a suitable algorithm for the user's requirements when it actually wasn't. But isn't it still chosen under some misaligned understanding of the user requirements, like seeing bubble sort as being quick to implement and thinking fastest delivery is the requirement in the moment? The choice to use bubble sort is not random. I'm not sure refinement as more information becomes available changes anything.
> You want to know what I think? I think this conversation is crossing into rudeness.
True. I can think of nothing more rude than asking for clarification an in effort to understand someone. My apologies. I will only talk past you henceforth... But seriously, appeal to emotion is a poor device. There is no good faith discussion that can venture into the world of logical fallacies. What were you trying to accomplish here?
But if only thing you know are basic moves playing against a player with 1600 ELO you are not going to win without serious training and 1600 is still far below grand master level.
At some level even if you know basic moves those moves are wrong.
Some things are hard to express in code even if you know exactly what you need to achieve and you know all the basic moves like loops and if statements.
If you know that you have to do a check mate or get amount of points and you know how to do basic moves but you don’t know any openings you are going to loose in 3-5 moves. If you get past openings you might get to 15 moves. If you do easiest greedy approach you loose if you take easiest defensive approach you loose.
It is not „what to program” because in chess you exactly know what is the goal. Getting to that goal alone is hard.
Like what? Are you, perhaps, confusing "hard" with "time consuming"? Some things take a long time to express in code (absent AI, at least). It's not hard, though. It's just rote copying down what you have already determined "what needs to be programmed". Getting to the point where it is just rote copying can be difficult, but is decidedly in the "what to program" phase.
Giving an example will take too much time from my perspective in regards to how much time I am willing to spend here arguing. Have a great day
It is other way around. Children can pick up a lot of skills that adults struggle at, like languages for example.
Plenty of research has shown reduced plasticity of the brain has stronger correlation to learning speed and ability as it grows old. Most breakthrough research is usually at age 40 or less or chess grand-masters fade in skill after. 25-40 is probably age group where the optimal balance between knowledge experience and learning ability for best outcomes.
They do? I've known plenty of kids and young adults who utterly failed to become even borderline competent at programming.
I think we can agree that few of them would be economically useful due to not knowing what to program. There is no sign of competency on that front. Certainly, even the best programmer in the world could theoretically be economically useless. Programmers only become economically useful when they can bridge "what to program".
Programming in elementary schools typically involves moving a turtle around on the screen. (My mother taught 4th grade in New York for many years, and I believe her when she explained the computer instruction.)
Economically valueable programming is much more complex than is taught in many schools through freshman college. (I taught programming at the college level from 1980 till I retired in 2020.)