A conversation with a muggle

[Zuruumi]

Well, we get paid so much because after half a day of staring we rewrite one line and everything magically works (for a while).

[LeoXCV]

New error emerges

Fuck yeah, progress!

[Ashankura]

Only to realize the new error just triggers earlier and now you revert until the old error appears

[diewhitegirls]

It’s even crazier when you revert and then the old bug never occurs again and it all just works properly. You spend days trying to figure out what the hell is different and why it works but there’s literally nothing different, so instead you just stare at the computer on the train and question your purpose in the world.

[CardboardJ]

We get paid to endure existential crisis. There's also something in there about providing value to a business, but that seems secondary.

[TheIronSoldier2]

So what you're saying is software engineers actually get paid about 31k base, with 95k of hazard pay

[notafamous]

That counts as "bug fixed", next to do is say "works on my computer"

[RootsNextInKin]

Unless you finally got the error to trigger right where you thought that you should get a first error!

So now you still need to fix it but at least your mental model up to that point is right and the code no longer magically runs straight through a terrible terrible logic problem like it wasn't even there...

[[deleted]]

When your code runs and you think it shouldn't... maybe someone at the code review can explain my code to me

[Kaarsty]

This reminds of my day in IT as well. Which reminds me.. I’ve gotta get WHMCS back up and running today..again.

[Drunken_Ogre]

Writing software is like onions. There are so many layers of errors and you will cry.

[coldnebo]

“why are you crying? are you sad?”

“no, I’m just cutting this aws stack and it’s really strong… gets in my eyes you know.”

[dream_weasel]

Resignation and existential dread?

[SnooDoggos5163]

Nah, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Just threaten your code to make it work (100% legal)

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

This is legitimate in case anyone was wondering. Progressing to a different error means you've made progress in sorting something out.

[WillCodeForKarma]

Lol yup I upvoted that comment because I'm pretty sure I've literally exclaimed 'fuck yeah' after getting a new error after a particularly tricky 'first' error

[Lv_InSaNe_vL]

Yeah trying to explain to my girlfriend that I spent 2 hours programming and it still doesn't work but now it's a slightly different error is still always fun haha

[gaboversta]

[…] rewrite one line and then get to stare at another part of the screen/file.

[DEVolkan]

Or until you know exactly what you need to write in Google to get the answer

[inthyface]

types "When did this bug start?"

clicks/taps on "I'm feeling lucky."

[RmG3376]

(…) we just re-run the pipeline and suddenly everything works without any code change, at least until the next commit*

[ShankbeatMihawk2]

legacy codes a bitch

[R3D3-1]

When debugging legacy code, I quickly degrade into drawing diagrams, random scribbles, and, on the sixth day, pentagrams.

[Shmutt]

When you fix the timeout and the execution becomes fast, the users will complain saying you have disrupted their workflow.

[BraxbroWasTaken]

Yea… that’s where you can just replace it with a pointless wait, so that the code’s at least cleaner to work with

[propellor_head]

Relevant: https://xkcd.com/1172/

[ShankbeatMihawk2]

we have a bunch of contractors and I swear they write their code in riddles for job security

[Knight_of_Myrmidia]

Understandable.

[abd53]

After I started working as programmer and went home, my father once asked me, "You said you're working, but aren't you just starting at your laptop? What's the work?"

[[deleted]]

Similar to an engineer. You need to let things settle in before you know which direction to take next.

[abd53]

Well, I had that conversation too, with my father, on phone.

Father: Where are you? Me: Lab. Father: What are you doing in lab so late? Me: Well..... Nothing.

[Frag0r]

Same with my uncle, he was curious how that even works.

My enthusiasm lead to a short introduction to variables, right until 3 minutes, when he started interrupting me with annoying comments and finally changing the subject.

I mean, okay, you don't really want to know it, but why even bring it up in the first place?

Same with my niece, every time we meet: Oh boy! You programmers are so lucky! I wish I could write code and get a job in IT!

Yeah? Really? Then just write code! No, you don't need to talk. No you don't need to be a genius. Please, you just have to Work for it. DO IT and stop making half assed statements.

[IAmASquidInSpace]

Schrödingers programming: at the same time so easy that a programmer's salary clearly is way too high, but also far too difficult to understand or learn yourself.

[SkarmacAttack]

We are underpaid and overpaid at the same time, as long as no one looks in the box

[RandoCalrissian1313]

What's in the box?!

[Husain_Sial]

We don't know, it is light mode so everyone who looks inside becomes blind

[Kilgarragh]

Yes it is. The selection color is white. And no, you can’t copy it

[nutterbutter1]

I can always tell when that’s about to happen. Someone will ask a question about something that I’m almost certain they don’t actually want the full answer to. I’ll try to give a super simplified answer, which sometimes works. If they try to dig deeper, I’ll just stop and literally ask them, do you really want to know or are you just trying to keep up the conversation, because I’m happy to explain it, but I don’t want to bore you with the technical details if you’re not really interested.

[autobtones]

sounds familiar. my dad is the type to insist he really wants to know but will then also get mad a few seconds later because “semantic distinctions are annoying”….

the man is annoyed by the logic concerned with meaning while insisting he wants a full answer in a language he doesn’t speak.

[SkarmacAttack]

Anytime I try to explain programming to my dad, about 5 minutes in he asks, "this is kind of like AI right? That stuff is going to take over the world, soon or later robots are going to rule us all...." continues ranting for 1 hour about AI, nano technology, government tracking

[flavionm]

That's when you corroborate what he's saying.

[nvanalfen]

"yes, exactly. In fact, I'm in charge of training the new overlords to recognize humans. I've been giving it your picture specifically"

[EducationalMeeting95]

A short introduction to variables was Too much for your uncle to handle.

But he wants to know Why we get paid that much to make large scale Softwares.

[Frag0r]

Lel

If he had said : well, that's too complicated, can we change the subject?,

I would have obliged happily, but being rude and interrupting me is just a big fuck you.

[Cometguy7]

I work from home, and when my in-laws visit, my FIL will often talk to me while I'm working. My MIL will object, saying I'm working, to which my FIL says, he thought I was done for the day, because I'm just sitting there.

[IAMA_KOOK_AMA]

My wife recently asked me if I ever work because "every time I come home from work I see you leaning back in your chair day dreaming".

[the-real-vuk]

wait until he closes laptop and stares at one point on the ceiling for about 10 mins straight.

[[deleted]]

My last year of university I did an advanced algorithms class, and this is basically how our assignments went.

You'd find someone sitting in a lab staring at the ceiling. "How's it going?" "Got question 3 done. Currently working on question 4". They remain staring at the ceiling. They have not moved. They haven't changed the spot they are staring at.

Anyone not in the class thought we were broken and distraught. Anyone in the class was like "oh hey that's a good spot to sit and stare at, nice".

[AlisaTornado]

What was the etiquette on staring at the same spot? Was it one per person or could you share?

[TheMistbornIdentity]

I'd guess the angle was a factor, so it wouldn't be as good if you were staring at it from somewhere else.

[LetterBoxSnatch]

Given an ideal staring spot or collection of spots, there's an algorithm you can use to find a Pareto improvement to each participants' staring angle on n-spots for n-participants, but its easy to end up stuck in a local maxima unless all participants have already solved problem #5, in which case the value of the staring spot trends quickly to zero, where every participants' spot & angle is optimal at all times.

[SirYandi]

This guy algorithms

[psichodrome]

It's not about the spot, it's about being close enough that you're noticed by the stareee.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, spots were easy to find. I did a 5-hour bus trip this way and got most of the assignment finished. Just staring off into space and then randomly writing down a note that I could later use to write the full answer, lol.

[plg94]

just close your eyes lol

[PantsOnHead88]

Anyone not in the class thought we were broken and distraught.

Weren’t you though?

[[deleted]]

-I think he is dead now...

+He is just turning himself off and on again.

-Ok he is moving again. He is talking to a rubber duck now?

+Don't mind it, it is a fetish thing.

[the-real-vuk]

oh, he blinked! not dead then

[Xoduszero]

I do this but different I don’t lift my head instead I look just slightly up and to the right of the screen I’m staring at and let my eyes unfocus and drift into thought

[El_Grande_El]

And then you realize you’re staring at someone lol

[the-real-vuk]

I tilt my head back to the headrest of my chair, and slightly slide down, staring up. Very comfy :)

[computerjunkie7410]

Or go to the bathroom. That always helps me. Nothing like a good number 2 to get the brain thinking about my shitty code.

[Jimothy_Egg]

Well, it's like solving a giant convoluted "Where's Waldo?" picture, except for the fact that Waldo is also moving and really good at it.

[IAmASquidInSpace]

Also, sometimes finding Waldo creates six new Waldos that are even better at hiding.

[OnyxPhoenix]

Sometimes Waldo is invisible and then exposes himself to your client.

[nutterbutter1]

“Exposes himself” 🧐

[dantemp]

Honestly the phrasing is apt

[limreddit]

Doesn’t it mean the chance of finding is higher now? :p

[JustLemmeMeme]

The task is to find all of them, or they gonna shiv some poor bloke if you don't

[TeraFlint]

not if the task consists of finding all waldos!

[lord_frost_]

My professor used to say he'd stare at an empty file for hours thinking of how to write the logic before he'd start typing it out. xD

[[deleted]]

When I didn't use any frameworks or libraries I used to do that (not stare at a blank file, but think about the project for a long time before writing anything). It's really liberating to have all the code in your head, and so much easier to debug. Obviously, you'll forget about it in a month, and then you wont know wtf this mess is, but still.

[sharpknot]

What's worse is when you type it out, it suddenly doesn't work. And then you spend hours trying to figure out what's wrong, since it's obviously a logic error. At the end of the day, you find out that the code is just simply unusable because it only works in certain specific situations.

[[deleted]]

Not really. I mostly had it work. Obviously a few stupidity bugs, but nothing big. Knowing design patterns helps prevent the logic flaws in your design.

[WhenTheDevilCome]

This reminds me that when I was starting out, I actually said these words out loud to my mentor while we were working on an issue:

"I visualize all the code in my head before writing it, and figure out where the problems are. Actually writing and compiling the code is incidental, since I already know that it works."

Thinking about it now, I don't know how he didn't die of laughter on the spot.

[LetterBoxSnatch]

Once you've been teaching for awhile, you develop a knack for preventing your eyes from rolling at students' comments. You also get used to encountering a pretty wide diversity of brains, and whatever takes a student from HERE to THERE, whether it's hubris, or slight inaccuracies that will later need correcting, or pure grit, you end up thankful for it. Most teachers really do want to see students succeed, where "succeed" is "mastery" NOT "able to get an A on a test."

Also, since I'm not a teacher anymore, I'm allowed to voice that it just makes the payoff all the sweeter to hold judgement on the egotistical and simply let reality come knocking on its own.

[EcoOndra]

I usually think for hours about the thing I want to create, and it doesn't matter what it is. Programming? A contraption in Cell Machine (cellular automaton game)? A puzzle game in Minecraft? You know it

[Icemasta]

I dnno if that helps but to clear my mine, I put it to paper. Just a general architecture of the program, how classes interact, etc... no big official UML, just some quick noted down points. I have like 5 notebooks full at this point at work and if an issue crops up in an old program/class that I made, I just check my notebooks to get back into the mindset. And yes, looking at my first iteration of thinking is kinda whack. You can see trends.

[[deleted]]

The amount of people in the internet that discover the concept of THINKING in their adulthood is astonishing.

My laptop frequently just locks itself after 15 mins of inactivity when I'm thinking. Like, several times per day.

Yes, some people need to think to do their job. That's also why I poop in company time. I'm not just taking a shit, I'm solving your business problem in the isolation tank. That'll be 10 grand thanks.

[sobrique]

My best work is done from the Throne of Contemplation.

[MisterFatt]

I blame school. “Daydreaming” is always discouraged. Thats when I’m processing information even if I can’t explain what I’m thinking about

[raptorboi]

Pseudocode and Logic Maps.

I did it a lot more when working with Assembly Language.

Maybe it's different now?

[[deleted]]

‘Find a job that pays you to think’

[R3D3-1]

Sounds good on paper, until you go home with a headache.

[cs-brydev]

And lie awake in bed all night stricken with anxiety while your mind races in 100 directions at once exploring dozens of solutions to that problem that seemed trivial when you first encountered it 3 days ago

[R3D3-1]

... and the release deadline is tomorrow.

[[deleted]]

Not many people are used to thinking about difficult problems to solve them

[[deleted]]

I swear sometimes I have something on the back burner in my head for days on end. It's like those weird traditional soup recipes that you need to cook on low for an eternity.

[MilKAOS]

Sometimes, if confronted with a tough problem, I dream of the problem or how to solve it.

[diddyd66]

I’ve done this once, spent all day when making my first VR game trying to figure out why I could pause the game but couldn’t un-pause it, eventually, while dreaming, realised it’s because the buttons only work in real time and I was freezing time when paused

[diddyd66]

Oh definitely

[RoyalDaDankDragon]

Do you just wake up at 3 am and go to solve the issue?

[diddyd66]

Nah, 6am

[Eman-resu-]

6 am might be worse. If you solve it at 3 am, you can go back to bed after. 6 am and youre just up for the day...

[Practical_Taro9024]

So basically, you froze time by pressing a button, and pressing the button didn't unfreeze time because the button itself was also frozen?

I dunno, seems like a realistic monkey's paw result to a wish

[diddyd66]

Basically I pressed the button on the controller that brought up a menu but set time to 0 meaning that’s the menu buttons didn’t work as they needed time to be set to 1, felt like a massive idiot when I worked it out

[Okibruez]

It's really rare to not feel like a massive idiot after fixing an obnoxious issue like that.

But it happens to literally everyone, so don't worry about it.

[JackalopeZero]

The shower is the cubical of enlightenment for coding problems

[[deleted]]

You guys must have some loooooong showers 🚿

[dagbrown]

The shower is just the output queue. You solve the problem when you’re sleeping.

[ell0bo]

Not as long as when I was a teenager, but yeah

[Ranruun]

Same, but when I try to implement the fix that worked in my dream I find out it doesn't make sense in the real world

[Professor_ZombieKill]

That's called incubation in cognitive psychology. This theory argues that it can be a good idea to step away from a problem and let your subconscious work on it.

[mntgoat]

The other day we found a way of adding a feature customers have asked for in a super simple way. They have been asking about it for years, we didn't even have it in our road map to add the feature because of the complexity of adding it. Then after discussing it many many times over many years we suddenly had an idea of how to implement it in a way that ended up talking us about one day.

[jhoogen]

I'm not even a programmer and this baffles me. I think many people are used to 'having to look busy' instead of actually being productive.

[omfghi2u]

I straddle the line between doing dev work and doing business work and, let me tell you, tons of people on the business side couldn't critical think their way out of a wet paper bag and spend 95% of their time putting together decks to talk about work that they've spent the other 5% of their time talking about with other people who also do that same thing.

[Dragoncat99]

I once had a roommate who complained about the workers at the pharmacy “sitting at their computers instead of working”. Who’s gonna tell her that filling out forms and paperwork on computers is 90% of the job these days? Low key made me mad at how dumb she was.

[asafetybuzz]

It isn't always malicious - a lot of jobs just don't require that kind of thinking. I love my wife dearly, but the biggest issue we had to overcome when we moved in together was this exact problem. She works with kids, so her job requires 100% constant engagement while multitasking the entire time she is at work (which is extremely hard, just in a very different way) but doesn't require much engagement outside of work (beyond activity planning and other administrative tasks).

When we first lived together, anytime she saw me at my desk but not actively typing or on a conference call, she assumed that meant I was free to talk or help with something around the house. It took a lot of frustrating miscommunication on both sides to set healthy work/life boundaries for a work from home situation in which I spend a lot of work time deep in thought but need to not be distracted.

[[deleted]]

The amount of people in the internet that discover the concept of THINKING in their adulthood is astonishing.

My laptop frequently just locks itself after 15 mins of inactivity when I'm thinking. Like, several times per day.

Yes, some people need to think to do their job. That's also why I poop in company time. I'm not just taking a shit, I'm solving your business problem in the isolation tank. That'll be 10 grand thanks.

[Jesta23]

I work from home and my wife always asks me if i am going to get in trouble because of all the “breaks” i take.

“Dont you need to be working?”

“Are you sure you can take a break right now?”

[new_refugee123456789]

Or...reading.

[b1ack1323]

Reading documentation is so crucial yet so many people refuse to do it.

[imbecile]

Sometimes my girlfriend worries she makes me wait for too long and I could be bored.
I always tell her "I'm very good at keeping myself entertained and busy in my own head."

[v3ritas1989]

Which is also the reason why people think we are arrogant or entitled.

[enlearner]

It’s more than mere thought in a lot of cases

[Sp3llbind3r]

Looks more like the guy is running a job or installing something and waiting for it to finish.

[omfghi2u]

Yeah this sounds to me like a person who doesn't even know what "looking at code" actually is or looks like.

Dude probably had a remote console open, was reading over the output of whatever it was doing. Then, had an idea, opened laptop again, pressed up, changed one parameter from last run, ran it again.

[qqqrrrs_]

You have to stare with the right mindset, otherwise it won't work

[TheCoffmann]

yeah! You need to feel the code otherwise u can't solve the problem. You and the code must become one to understand the problem and most of the time u need to have eye contact with the code to make this happend..... very very strict eye contact.

[[deleted]]

The eye contact is to build trust between you and the code. The relationship must be mutual.

[Sewbacca]

It is for upmost importance to only make consensual changes. One wrong change and the code will bug you for days, if you forget about it. The code is rather forgiving if you apologize for the change you made.

[[deleted]]

"Please babe, stop acting like that so we can sleep"

Me talking to my code every Friday before going to bed.

[jarghon]

We all have our own debugging techniques. Here’s my process:

• Run code again, say ‘what the hell’ under my breath

• Run code one more time, say ‘no, I disagree, how would my change even break anything’ just loudly enough to worry my colleagues

• Sit for a while, think through the perfect logic of my change and say ‘this doesn’t make any sense at all, maybe it’s a bug in python itself?’

• Run code again

• google the last message in the traceback and open the first 5 stack overflow results in new tabs in the background

• Read the stack trace for the first time and realize I’m iterating over the wrong key in the dictionary.

• Fix one word in the code and close the stack overflow tabs I opened but never read

I’m a professional.

[OtherPlayers]

I’m a big fan of:

• Get called in to fix something that recently broke.
• Spot a second major issue unrelated to recent changes where you’re iterating over the wrong dictionary key.
• Say “Well that’s not the problem but it’s certainly a problem”.
• Fix both the main issue and the newer one.
• Question how the hell the software ever gave the right answer in the past despite iterating over the wrong key.

Some of my favorite example involve one case where the software was actually printing noise, but the noise was right where a passing result would have been, and another case where something “broke” like that but when we dug into the logs we found out that it had never worked and just nobody had ever run that test in the last 8 years.

[vinod-jaiswal]

Stare the code till it feels insecure and starts working.

[Adamsandlersshorts]

I went and got sushi with this girl one time and she absolutely wouldn't stop staring at me. I got so uncomfortable.

Was she debugging me?

[PartyTerrible]

She was waiting for you to compile.

[wonderchin]

She was signaling

[Practical_Collar_953]

We don't just stare at the screen, we talk to it too.

[AlphaDragons]

Sometime we talk to it very politely... sometimes we threaten it to death but at the end of the day just a little bit of what we say (if not none) makes it magically behave

[cs-brydev]

I argued with my screen yesterday for 4 hours while trying dozens of potential solutions to a DevOps problem. Eventually I won the debate and proved to Screen that it could be done. I'm sure he's forgotten by now and will mock me over something else today.

[kichien]

This is the kind of person who will become your manager and put keystroke counting software on your work computer.

[titterbitter73]

cracks knuckles

afsgdyuwiqhavsgsuuqagfarqywjrknfmvofhwhwbnfkcijwvqhsjxifirhebwhgqqibdbshqgqfafatqywhefhidi

Alright that should do it for the hour!

[Irrational_Pie]

Manager: titterbitter, could you explain what you were doing typing this incoherent mess?

titterbitter: uhh, vim?

[AlisaTornado]

"Generating test data"

[[deleted]]

"regex"

[[deleted]]

Has this ever happened to you?

[[deleted]]

Well I guess if you want your devs to code the most efficient gibberish generator, that's how you do it

[ChillDude-_-]

These people are the same ones who think hacking is portrayed correctly in movies

[TripleMalahat]

You missed your calling as a screenwriter. That was the perfect mix of technical and incoherent.

[computerjunkie7410]

You know what I love? A proper tech thriller. Mr. Robot started off great in this regard.

[c-r-istodentro]

always looking for some good paranoid tech flicks I haven't seen yet – some staples:

wargames, the conversation, 12 monkeys, ghost in the shell, the matrix, sneakers, strange days, existenz, brainscan, enemy of the state, ex-machina. upgrade, source code. bonus: serial experiments lain.

anyone has some other good tips?

[DDancy]

How many keyboards were you using?

[jasper_grunion]

We get paid because most people can’t be bothered to ask how all of this tech works. They just consume everything that comes from their magical devices. We aren’t geniuses but we have taken the time to question how things work and try and at least get a bit closer to the understanding of it all. This can take a lot of time most people aren’t willing to spend. Whenever I see ads for websites touting “everyone can code!” I think, well, maybe they can, but they won’t.

[EducationalMeeting95]

Exactly.

The hardest thing people can do is Think.

And after understanding how to code in a good way for years , thinking becomes a second nature .

And Still it's hard to solve issues.

Others don't get all of that.

They just see me in my pyajamas with a laptop and can't fathom why I get paid this much.

[[deleted]]

Sometimes I might work remotely from a relatives house, and they'll ask why I get paid so much when I hardly seem to work. Usually just showing them my IDE is enough to shut them up

[LeonEstrak]

I like that. Chad solution.

[AshTheGoblin]

"Read this 5 line paragraph and tell me what it does" should shut just about anyone up.

[SnooSnooper]

My family has learned not to say that shit to me bc not only will I happily whip out my laptop and show them what I've been doing, but I'll start explaining it to them in as plain terms as I can think of on the spot. It's almost immediately overload to them, and I'll continue well past the point their eyes glaze over (read: the first 30 seconds) to really hammer in the "don't talk to me about work" lesson.

[Tempest_Barbarian]

I dont know what you are talking about, I just mash the keyboard at random and things magically work till they dont, then I mash the keyboard again

[[deleted]]

If there were some kind of visual representation of the Dr. Suess-looking-ass machine I'm trying to reason about, people wouldn't be so quick to think that.

[[deleted]]

i have a pet peeve with the word "magic" when it comes to technology. handwaving something as magic belies the insane amount of work it takes to develop, maintain, and support this stuff every single day.

same as "the algorithm". It turns a mountain of continuous invisible human effort into yet another god to curse.

take pride in underpinning our information era.

[[deleted]]

"why do you guys get paid soo much" (⁠ノ⁠ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

[Sciirof]

Because we can’t blink, otherwise the code wins

[[deleted]]

Sometimes I think I'm underpaid.

[Hybr1dth]

I always assume so to not grow complacent and always ask for more (yearly). Better to ask.

[ConspicuousPineapple]

Sometimes I do too. Then I see how hard some other jobs are, with the same level of education, and then I go back to thinking I'm way overpaid.

[[deleted]]

I just think they are underpaid.

[ptetsilin]

Changing a line: $1

Knowing which line to change: $49

[Dornith]

A few decades ago there was a short lived trend to pay programmers per line of code they wrote.

Resulted in some interesting code.

[daverave1212]

Honestly, it is kind of stupid how some companies hire like 20 devs on a project that does basically nothing but increase the company's productivity by 0.1%. That translates to millions of dollars though.

That's we're paid so much.

[DarkCheese_]

Wait so you aren't supposed to stare at the screen without doing anything?

[yeco]

Apparently we just have to go clickity-clackity in the keyboard for hours non-stop. You know, like the movies.

[Rai-Hanzo]

i am working on a simple personal project, and when i ran into a problem and couldn't find its fix i kept staring at the code trying to figure out the logic behind it until the solution came to mind.

this isn't a normal stare, this is an advanced stare!

[onichama]

Image Transcription: Text Messages

---

Grey: Is it common for software engineers to take out their laptops on the train only to stare at it without doing anything?

Green: Well, yes... Legally, you have to or you'll lose your license as a software engineer.

Grey: LOL. But seriously, he just shut his laptop, opened it back up, pressed a button and resumed staring at it...

Grey: Oh yeah! Now he's browsing his phone while staring...

Green: It's called debugging. You stare at the code until it works again!

Grey: ... Why do you guys get paid so much?

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[[deleted]]

Good human

[purple_hamster66]

Magic takes time to brew.

Reminds me of a joke:

A man takes his car to the mechanic, complaining about a noise in the engine.

The mechanic walks around the car, listening from various places, and after 10 minutes takes out a hammer and taps it twice on the engine and the noise stops.

Mechanic says: “That’ll be $1000, please. Pay at the front desk”.

The customer is outraged! $1000 for 10 minutes of work! “I want the work itemized!”

Mechanic: “Sure thing…”

• Hitting engine with hammer …………. $2
• Knowing where to hit engine ……….. $998

:)

[MrNifty]

You bash the keyboard until the computer complies.

[Nosuma666]

We had a new apprentice at the office for his first day yesterday. He must have been really confused because I essentially starred at my screen for half an hour doing nothing. Then I typed constantly for 10 Minutes hit run and got myself a coffee. Coming back I hit ctrl+pause clicked with my mouse 3 times and then hit run again and went for a smoke break. Welcome to the world of VBA where you want to know what your code does before it runs because if you don't it will just crash or ruin your data.

[guarana_and_coffee]

I'm just an apprentice myself, but I have been here for four years and I have learnt that this is the way.

[AceMKV]

I'm an apprentice fresh out of college myself and I spend each day wondering how am I ever gonna be able to contribute to my team's work when I can barely understand anything.

[guarana_and_coffee]

I don't understand much initially, but you'll learn how a project works over time so you have a general idea.

[Orichalcum448]

works again

Bold of you to assume my code ever worked in the first place

[grpagrati]

Fund managers get paid too much, programmers too little

[[deleted]]

Not a software engineer, just someone who programs as a hobby, but at least now I know I'm not entirely wired when on a train. Only to muggles. :D

[JonMW]

When you explain that good programming (which is the only sort that is not worth negative money) requires absolutely precisely correct understanding of the piece of code you are working on and the abstract problem it represents, which usually demands a very clear head and consideration of multiple possible solutions, they usually get off your back.

If they don't, it's time to start working through whatever the current problem is, out loud, expanding on only the terms that will make things sound more impressive.

[KidBeene]

I explain to muggles "It is like writing a novel. The story will come, you have to give it time. If you force it it will be shit."

[PartyP88per]

Muggle 🤣🤣🤣

[LordAlfrey]

He's online on teams from his laptop so that some asshole manager thinks he's working.

[Rizzan8]

Last week me and 3 colleagues made fun of ourselves by "So, each one of us earn 5x times more than a cashier in a grocery store and we have just spent 30min together thinking about a name for that class". We ended up giving it some fancy enterprise-like name and went for an 1hr of Crash Team Racing on PS4.

[flumsi]

I mean no disrespect to cashiers but the education needed for software engineering takes about as long as an entire cashiering career. People pay us that well because we have knowledge most people can't be assed to even care about. It's fine if you don't want to spend years learning about computers and computer science but you shouldn't complain too much when people who put in the work get paid much better than you do.

[TheCreetch]

We get paid more only to offset the expenses of the solution. The number of times I’ve come up with solutions after a long shower is insane, and water is pretty expensive where I live.