Programming

The notion that creating a half-decent application is quick and easy enough that I would be willing to transform their idea into reality for free.

That just because I'm a programmer that must mean I'm a master of anything technology related and can totally help out with their niche problems.

"Hey computer guy, how do I search for new channels on my receiver?"

"Hey computer guy, my excel spreadsheet is acting weird"

"My mobile data isn't working. Fix this."

My friend was a programmer and served in the army, people ordered him to go fix a sattelite. He said he has no idea how but they made him try anyways. It didn't work and everyone was disappointed.

The worst and most common misconception is that I can fix their Windows issues from a vague description they give me at a party.

I once had a friend who told me, that he finds it interesting that I think and write in 1s and 0s.

"Just"

That one word has done a fuck ton of lifting over my career.

"Can't you just make it do this"

I can't "just" do anything you fuck head! It takes time and lots of effort!

A lot people compleatly overrate the amount of math required. Like its probably a week since I used a aritmetic operator.

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

• You're a hacker (only if you count the shit I program as hacks, being hack jobs)
• You can fix printers
• You're some sort of super sherlock for guessing the reason behind problems (they'll tell you "my computer is giving me an error", fail to provide further details and fume at your inability to guess what's wrong when they fail to replicate)
• If it's on the screen, it's production ready

That there's something inherently special about me that makes me able to program....

... Yes...patience and interest.

People think I can hack anything ever created, from some niche 90s CD software to online services

That IT subject matter like cybersecurity and admin work is exactly the same as coding,

At least my dad was the one who bore the brunt of that mistake, and now I have a shiny master's degree to show to all the recruiters that still don't give my resume a second glance!

That they have any business telling me how complicated something is or how long something should take for me to implement.

That it's dry and boring and even I must hate it because there's no place for creativity in a technical field.

That it's mostly sitting behind a computer writing code. More than half my time is spent in the exploration phase: math, research, communication and developing a concept. The actual writing of code is typically less than 1/3.

Also as someone mentioned before, that it's considered something 'dry'. I honestly wouldn't be able to code properly without my intuition. Take for example code smell. I don't know why the code is bad, I just feel that it's off somehow, and I keep chipping away until it feels just right.

Doesn't happen as much, but family and non tech friends would present me to other people that "worked with computers" thinking I could take new job opportunities. They were always wildly unrelated to my field.

I know I know,.. they acted in good faith, and probably could have adapted a bit, but like 30 years ago there was a lot of overlap and systems where somewhat similar, but now somebody trained in Linux kernel maintenance isn't going to learn how to create SharePoint SPFx webparts. Development is very specific now!

After doing it for 15 years, I must be good at it and everything should be easy.

hidethepainharold.jpg

Not programming per se but my sister thinks it's okay to have 300+ Chrome tabs open and just memorize the relative locations of them whenever she needs something. She's lucky she has a beefy computer.

1. I'm a programmer, so I must know how to get X done in Y software.

2. I don't use or so I'm some kind of Luddite and can't possibly know anything useful about computers.

One thing that fascinates me about #1 is that the absolute raw dependency people have on Google doesn't seem to ever lead to searching for a tutorial.

I think that non-tech people think that tech just goes. Like you pull it out of a box and turn it on and it just works. They have no idea how much jenk is in everything and how much jenk was eradicated before a user came went anywhere near.

Based on some places I used to work, upper management seemed convinced that the "idea" stage was the hardest and most important part of any project, and that the easy part is planning, gathering requirements, building, testing, changing, and maintaining custom business applications for needlessly complex and ever changing requirements.

That you can mix and match bugfixes like lego blocks an hour before release.

It has been a long time since I've interacted with people who are largely tech ignorant, but back in the day people always assumed I could hack anything since I'm a website developer. It wasn't uncommon for people to ask me if I can hack Facebook. I mean the answer is "probably not, but maybe", but they think that means furiously typing for 20 seconds and yelling "I'm in!", when the reality would be months worth of snooping and social engineering.