this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
200 points (95.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43939 readers
376 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've always been curious as to what "normal" people think programming is like. The wildest theory I've heard is "typing ones and zeroes" (I'm a software engineer)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sekrayray@lemmy.world 47 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s like building the NY subway system—you’re constantly adding on new bypasses and trying to maintenance old tunnels in order to account for new features/population. It ultimately ends up working most of the time and the daily commuters get to move from Point A to Point B with minimal interruption, but if you viewed the subway as a whole it’s a cobbled mess with lots of redundancy. Some of the architects who are currently around don’t even know where the oldest tunnels go, or why they’re there.

Wanted to give a take on it that didn’t focus on the obvious “language” aspect. I could be 100% wrong on this—I’m sort of basing it off of comments I’ve seen here or there. I know very few folks who work in tech and I work in healthcare.

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Honestly that's more like network engineering than programming, but you're surprisingly accurate.

[–] Jeremyward@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

This is an accurate representation of tech debt.

[–] BobaFett26@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Definitely spot on for network engineering.

[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Fascinatingly accurate.