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danielvaughn | 6 days ago

I'm curious which skills you think are much harder than programming.

discuss

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zjp|6 days ago

It depends on whether you mean programming (typing your solution into your text editor) or programming (formalizing your solution to a problem in a way that can be programmed).

habinero|5 days ago

Honestly? Anything that requires a lot of manual dexterity because that takes a long time to master, like a trade or art.

People love to lionize it, but honestly I can teach the basics of coding to anyone in a weekend. I love teaching people to code. It can be frustrating to learn but it's just not that difficult. I've mostly written Python and Ruby and Node for my career. They're not super hardcore languages lol.

What is hard is learning the engineering side. I don't get paid for the code I write, I get paid because I get handed a business wishlist and it's my job to figure out how to make that business reality and execute it, from start to finish.

I tell my boss what I'm going to be working on, not the other way around, and that's true pretty early in your career. At my current level of seniority, I can personally cost the company millions of dollars. That's not even a flex, most software engineers can do that. Learning to make good decisions like that takes a long time and a lot of experience, and that's just not something you can hand off.