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

submitted 10 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] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Idk I'm not sure I'd trust any dev who doesn't consider cyber security in their coding. So much development is centered around security whether that's auth or input sanitization or SQL query parameterization...

If you're working on an internal only application with no Internet connectivity then maybe you can ignore cybersec. But only maybe.

[–] Mesa 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No one's saying to ignore it.

If I own and run a sandwich shop, I don't need to be on the farm picking and processing the wheat to make the flour that goes into my bread. I could do that, but then I'd be a farmer, a miller, and a sandwich maker. All I need to know is that I have good quality flour or bread so that I can make damn good sandwiches.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm confused where cybersec sits in your sandwich analogy. If every time you sold a sandwich someone could use it to steal all the money in your business you'd probably need to know how to prevent reverse sandwich cashouts.

I'm not talking about advanced, domain specific cybersec. I don't expect every developer to have the sum total knowledge of crowd strike... But in a business environment I don't see how a developer can not consider cybersec in the code they write. Maybe in an org that is so compartmentalized down that you only own a single feature?

[–] Mesa 1 points 10 months ago

In a few words, I'm reiterating the point that a professional software developer =/= professional cyber security expert. Yes, I know that I should, for example, implement auth; but I'm not writing the auth process. I'm just gonna use a library.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

... You know not all development is Internet connected right? I'm in embedded, so maybe it's a bit of a siloed perspective, but most of our programs aren't exposed to any realistic attack surfaces. Even with IoT stuff, it's not like you need to harden your motor drivers or sensor drivers. The parts that are exposed to the network or other surfaces do need to be hardened, but I'd say 90+% of the people I've worked with have never had to worry about that.

Caveat on my own example, motor drivers should not allow self damaging behavior, but that's more of setting API or internal limits as a normal part of software design to protect from mistakes, not attacks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's fair to point out that not all development is Internet connected, but ~58% of developers work in web dev.

5% in desktop apps

3% in mobile

2.4% in embedded

And then of the remaining I'd be shocked if few of their domains excluded Internet facing devices.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-developer-roles-developer-type

But you're right to point out development isn't a monolith. Professionally though: anyone working in a field where cybersecurity is a concern should be thinking about and knowledgeable of cybersec.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I didn't realize just how siloed my perspective may be haha, I appreciate the statistics. I'll agree that cyber security is a concern in general, and honestly everyone I know in industry has at least a moderate knowledge of basic cyber security concepts. Even in embedded, processes are evolving for safety critical code.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, at least I know from this that some folks give my résumé the first look! Not exactly more than cold comfort though, especially when I've already built a career in business management after a family friend gave me a leg up when the "I don't want to do my job!" HR sorting bots kept discarding my resume for not having gone to Harvard for either my Bachelor's or Master's.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My part of the hiring cycle they've already gotten past the pipeline / bots. I'm there to do architecture and design questions 😉

But I do read every resume.