Programming

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What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/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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[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They can't possibly judge what is trivial to achieve and what's a serious, very hard problem.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As always, there is an XKCD for that.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The example given in the comic has moved from one category to the other. Determining whether an image contains a bird is a fairly simple "two hour" task now.

Plot twist: The woman in the comic is Fei-Fei Li, she got the research team and five years and succeeded 🤯

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well that's after thousands of people and 100s of millions in money

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Of course, but I still find it remarkable that the task that was picked as an example for something extremely difficult is now trivially easy just a few years later

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That is a pretty hard thing to do, to be fair. And the list of things that are easy sometimes makes big jumps forward and the effect of details on the final effort can be massive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

You're right! Even for programmers.