Programming

17576 readers

125 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

110

What are some common misconceptions about programming that you'd like to debunk? (programming.dev)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

179 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (3 children)

That if you know how to code, you understand how computers work and understand really complicated math concepts.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That's the difference between a programmer and a computer scientist, but even I (a computer scientist) I'm not an expert in hardware, networking, or OS level operations because that's not my daily focus.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

I compare my career to the medical field. Sure there are some crossovers but lots of specialties.

Would you consult a dentist about your bowel movements?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

and what you just described is the difference between a computer scientist and a computer engineer!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I call that the "nerd equivalency problem". I think it's the source of much (most? all?) of the problems with software that comes out of organizations that are not programming shops by nature.

"We're not moving fast enough (or, "I have this great idea!"), hire another nerd!"

The problem also exists within individual programmers ("sure, I can do that UX/UI thingy, just let me finish building this ray-tracing thingy"), but that's just an ordinary cognitive weakness that affects us all (thinking that being expert in one field makes one expert in all). It's the job of proper leadership to resist that, not act as though it's true.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't even remember my times tables anymore!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Oh, that's easy:

	0	1
0	0	0
1	0	1

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I know my wife sets the table at 6 o'clock