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.
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.
I’m pretty sure that government software always blows because they think software can be written according to a fixed schedule and budget
It’s tempting to think it’s like building a house, and if you have the blueprints & wood, it’ll just be fast and easy. Everything will go on schedule
But no, in software, the “wood” is always shape shifting, the land you’re building on is shape shifting, some dude in Romania is tryna break in, and the blueprints forgot that you also need plumbing and electric lines
Well, that’s probably true for the most part but by far the reality is that it comes down to lowest bidder 9/10 times. Unrealistic budgets and unrealistic time frames with as cheap labor they can find gets you a large amount of government funded projects throughout all the years.
One of the most common problems of government or other big organisation software is that they don’t scale, either “not well” or “not at all”.
Some guy hacks up a demo that looks nice and seems to do what customer wants, but then it turns out a) that it only allows for (number of open ports on one machine) users at the same time, and b) it only works if everything runs on one machine. Or worse, one core.
It’s tempting to think it’s like building a house, and if you have the blueprints & wood, it’ll just be fast and easy. Everything will go on schedule
it never goes according to schedule eve if there is blueprint & wood
Building a house (or any construction project) is notoriously impossible to be on schedule and on budget too.
I have a hypothesis that a factor is that government needs to work for everyone.
A private company can be like “we only really support chrome”, but even people running ie6 at a tiny resolution need to renew their license.
I believe this is usually covered by the fact that you can do just about anything you need to do over mail. I once ran into a government site that only worked on Edge.
That’s absolutely true. What’s hard and what’s easy in programming is so completely foreign to non-programmers.
Wait, you can guess my password in under a week but you can’t figure out how to pack a knapsack?
I once had this and ended up paying for the meeting room cuz he was broke.
What’s worse is them insisting that you build it in Rust and Mongodb only.
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.
And everyone expects you to know how to make phone apps.
Like, I think I know what to google in order to start learning how.
If you know Java or Javascript you can easily build apps.
But like in every other software field, design is often more important.
He said he has no idea how but they made him try anyways.
Uh, I’ve been present when such a thing happened. Not in the military, though. Guy should install driver on a telephone system, despite not being a software guy (he was the guy running the wires). Result: About as bad as expected. The company then sent two specialists on Saturday/Sunday to re-install everything.
Ironically, most of those things are true, but only with effort. We are better than most people at solving technical problems, or even problems in general, because being a programmer requires the person to be good at research, reading documentation, creative problem solving, and following instructions. Apparently those aren’t traits that are common among average people, which is baffling to me.
Sometimes I’ll solve a computer problem for someone in an area that I know nothing about by just googling it. After telling them that all I had to do was google the problem and follow the instructions they’ll respond by saying that they wouldn’t know what to google.
Just being experienced at searching the web and having the basic vocabulary to express your problems can get you far in many situations, and a fair bit of people don’t have that.
I used to get a lot of people asking for help with their printer. No, just because I am a software developer doesn’t mean I know how why your printer isn’t working. But, yes, I can probably help you…
My neighbour asked me to take a look at her refrigerator because it wasn’t working. I am a software developer.
“Sometimes when somebody called it shows up up here but normally it covers the screen and I can see the name.” Like I have no idea how those businesses fix people’s phones, when they hear this kind of instructions. Makes me tear my hair out.
Don’t pretend you suck at these things. You know very well you are fucking equipped to fix this kind of thing when you work with programming. Unless you’re, like a web developer or something ofc
You are part of the problem
Nope
Why should I fix any of those peasant problems if I can order the lowly technician to fix my computer which I use to make crappy SQL queries? 🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐
Because you are a nice person to your relatives???
Thankfully dad knows how to troubleshoot stuff or go to the technician. I just tell him that I haven’t used windows In ages
The worst and most common misconception is that I can fix their Windows issues from a vague description they give me at a party.
Or some stupid Facebook “””issue”””
At least that’s an easy one, you just convince them to delete their account. \s
My favorite is “and there was some kind of error message.” There was? What did it say? Did it occur to you that an error message might help someone trying to diagnose your error?
What did it say?
I’ve had users who legitimately did not understand this question.
“What do you mean, what did it say? I clicked on it but it still didn’t work.”Then you set up an appointment to remote in, ask them to show you what they tried to do, and when the error message appears, they instantly close it and say “See, it still doesn’t work. What do we even pay you for?”
I’ve had remote sessions where this was repeated multiple times, even after telling them specifically not to close the message. It’s an instinctive reflex.Or it won’t happen when you’re watching, because then they’re thinking about what they’re doing and they don’t make the same unconscious mistake they did that brought up the error message. Then they get mad that “it never happens when you’re around. Why do you have to see the problem anyway? I described it to you.”
When that happens, I’m happy. Cause there is no error when the task is done right.
I mail them a quick step-by-step manual with what they just did while I watched.
When the error happens the next time I can tell them to RTFM and get back to me if that doesn’t solve the issue.
Isn’t the solution to send them this link? ;-)
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=majorWon’t solve their problem, but they won’t be your friend anymore :)
This does solve the problem for you though
You Don’t Win Friends with
SaladLinux
No, it’s this link:
Windows bad. Linux good. No need for nuance, just follow the hivemind.
Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?
Don’t you mean Linux Torvalds?
that hurt to type
Oh you have an issue on Linux? Just try a different distro
(this one hurts more because it technically usually works)
Lol! My mum still asks both me and my husband (“techy” jobs according to her) to solve all her problems with computers/printers/ the internet at large/ any app that doesn’t work… the list is endless. I take it as a statement of how proud she is of me that she would still ask us first, even if we haven’t succeeded in fixing a single issue since the time the problem was an old cartridge in the printer some 5-6 years ago.
My answer: “I don’t play Windows”.
I once had a friend who told me, that he finds it interesting that I think and write in 1s and 0s.
Confuse him with “I used to do that but I’m nonbinary now”
Oh, my gender, sexuality, and base are also quantum
Every Hollywood programmer
That might be true of VHDL / Verilog programmers I guess.
“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!
It’s a meme to say “can’t you just” at my workplace
“Would you kindly”…
Also “simple”. “It’s a simple feature.”
Simple features are often complex to make, and complex features are often way too simple to make.
I believe that it’s not for nothing that simplicity is considered more sophisticated. Many, many cycles of refinement.
It’s like, gotta be just one line of code, right?
I worked in a post office once. I once had a customer demand some package delivery option, if I remember correctly. He was adamant that it was “only a few lines of code”, that I was difficult for not obliging, and that anyone in the postal service should make code changes like that on the whims of customers. It felt like I could have more luck explaining “wallpaper” to the currents in the ocean…
explaining “wallpaper” to the currents in the ocean…
If this isn’t just a saying I haven’t heard of, I’m doing my best to make it a common place phrase, absolutely perfect in this context!
Thank you so kindly :) It’s not a saying, as far as I know.
I used to work on printer firmware; we were implementing a feature for a text box for if you scanned a certain number of pages on a collated, multi-page copy job. The text box told you it would print the pages it had stored to free up memory for more pages; after those pages had printed, another text box would come up asking if you wanted to keep scanning pages, or just finish the job.
The consensus was that it would be a relatively simple change; 3 months and 80 files changed — with somewhere in the ballpark of 10000-20000 lines changed, — proved that wrong.printer firmware is tens of thousands of lines long
I’m starting to understand why printers are so horrible
