this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Programming

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As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren't as familiar with it. It doesn't happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.

  • I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.
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[–] sirico@feddit.uk 10 points 8 months ago

That I'm in any way smart or good at math

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

The files are IN the computer.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)
  1. I'm a programmer, so I must know how to get X done in Y software.

  2. I don't use or so I'm some kind of Luddite and can't possibly know anything useful about computers.

One thing that fascinates me about #1 is that the absolute raw dependency people have on Google doesn't seem to ever lead to searching for a tutorial.

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[–] treechicken@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Not programming per se but my sister thinks it's okay to have 300+ Chrome tabs open and just memorize the relative locations of them whenever she needs something. She's lucky she has a beefy computer.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It has been a long time since I've interacted with people who are largely tech ignorant, but back in the day people always assumed I could hack anything since I'm a website developer. It wasn't uncommon for people to ask me if I can hack Facebook. I mean the answer is "probably not, but maybe", but they think that means furiously typing for 20 seconds and yelling "I'm in!", when the reality would be months worth of snooping and social engineering.

[–] darkpanda@lemmy.ca 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Why wouldn’t you just create a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track their IP addresses tho?

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[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

I had some dude here trying to tell me, a mathematician and data scientist who is developing AIs for fun and is a holder of an MA in Visual Effects specializing in procedural design, who has worked on algorithmic video game development, what AIs are or are going to be capable of in procedural/generative/algorithmic game design "because he has played a lot of games" and argued for days with me, cherry-picking everything I wrote attempting to use my words refuting him to support his arguments.

Just... Infuriating.

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That it's mostly sitting behind a computer writing code. More than half my time is spent in the exploration phase: math, research, communication and developing a concept. The actual writing of code is typically less than 1/3.

Also as someone mentioned before, that it's considered something 'dry'. I honestly wouldn't be able to code properly without my intuition. Take for example code smell. I don't know why the code is bad, I just feel that it's off somehow, and I keep chipping away until it feels just right.

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[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 8 months ago

I was at a party explaining that we were finishing up a release trying to decide which bugs were critical to fix. The person that I was talking to was shocked that we would release software with known bugs.

When I explained that all software has bugs, known bugs, he didn't believe me.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago

That the business idea, the design, the architecture, and code for the next multimillion dollar app is just sitting in my head waiting for the next guy with enough motivation to extract from me.

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