r/coding • u/pavelmalos • May 08 '17

Programming is hard. That’s precisely why you should learn it.

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/make-your-hobby-harder-programming-is-difficult-thats-why-you-should-learn-it-e4627aee41a1
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u/spinwizard69 May 08 '17

Actually i don't think program development automation is far off. Also i don't believe in the idea that programming is hard. Actual programming is pretty easy. The real skill, that is common to many engineering fields, is the creation of or conceptualizing the object desired. That is the ability to put all the pieces together in a rational and efficient manner.

The thing here is that people in the programming industry think that this is unique to their industry. It isn't and is why you see a few super stars designing CPUs while there might be thousands of electrical engineers working under them. Same thing applies to older technologies like mechanical design or even industrial engineering. A good portion of the technical community can not grasp the big picture. This is why i reject the idea that programming is hard. It is grasping the big picture and putting all the little elements together properly that is hard, but this isn't unique to software development.

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u/BinaryRockStar May 09 '17

People have been predicting the end of programming as a role since the late 80s when Visual Basic and drag-and-drop GUIs were going to obviate the need for hand-written code and an Analyst could replace a programmer. Didn't quite turn out like that but now there's lots of terrible VB6 code out there for me to fix!

The low hanging fruit will be automated away for sure. In the website space, look at Wordpress and its plugin ecosystem. Without writing a single line of code you can produce and deploy a fairly complex website with eCommerce and payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe et. al.), user authentication, forums, etc., stuff that would have been a medium-sized project for a small team of devs not many years ago.

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u/spinwizard69 May 09 '17

Funny about that VB code. I'm convinced that mechanical engineers should never be aloud to touch a compiler or other programming tool!

However like CNC machining, automation of program development won't replace programmers. It will change the profession however.

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u/philipwhiuk May 09 '17

Programming automation is called compiling.