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Programming and Humility (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by sisyphean@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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This is something I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Programming is an activity that makes you face your own fallibility all the time. You write some code, compile it or run it, and then 80% of the time, it doesn’t work exactly the way you imagined. There’s an error message, or it just behaves incorrectly. Then you need to iterate on it and fix the issues until you get the desired result, and even then it’s subtly wrong, and causes an outage at 3am on Sunday.

I thought this experience would teach programmers to be the humblest people in the world.

I can’t believe how wrong I was. Programmers can be the most arrogant dickheads you will ever meet. Why is that?

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[–] hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest 2 points 1 year ago

you need to iterate on it and fix the issues until you get the desired result

That's pretty much it right there. To be successful in programming it's more or less required that you're a little headstrong. If you're not kinda stubborn you'll have the morale beaten out of you by a segfault or a missing semi-colon or some other tiny thing and self-select out.

As much as programming enforces the idea that "I've been wrong before and I should be humble" it equally enforces the idea that even experts can make mistakes and that the validity of every statement is independent of the source. Aka everything is up for debate.

On the flip side, holding down a job requires/rewards collaborative skills. I've seen companies make exceptions for "10x" programmers but the majority of us have to at least be able to work as team players.

So in reality I think we actually get a pretty good balance of people. But yeah it is kinda a shock the first time you realize that this practice which is based on empirical truths and logic can harbor some insane dickheads.

Also, I wonder how you're meeting other programmers. I have 15+ software dev friends that I've made in person and only 1 I've made on the internet. Could there be a hidden variable? Maybe it's not all programmers who are dickheads but programmers who post on /r/learnMalbolge or maybe 2nd year programming students who might be a little immature because they're 20 and not because they're programmers.

Best of luck. You'll find your 127.0.0.1 in time ;)