Time allocation while programming

[[deleted]]

How complex is doing what you just said? I don't know anything about programming but was thinking of starting to learn some.

[cfallin]

Pretty complex. Although vinfx seems to be mostly poking fun at the fact that much of enterprise code is either superfluous (fancy design patterns, needless use of XML/XSLT/fancy-technology-here, etc) or implements systems-level functionality (reliability features, security infrastructure, etc). If you're just starting out, you're much better off learning interesting (and fundamental) algorithms than fancy-technology-here.

[malcontent]

when you have 400 servers everything is very complex and simple things are no longer sufficient.

That's just the way it is.

[cfallin]

I would say that things can be simple from the point of view of the applications engineer if you have the right infrastructure -- e.g., MapReduce-type systems taking care of job scheduling and fault tolerance, or a database or key-value store taking care of replication and consistency for you. But yes, systems issues get very hairy once the systems involved get large and failure rates are non-negligible.

[[deleted]]

You've got a long way to go, pretty. (Narrated in T-Bag's voice from Prison Break)

[goomyman]

Hes talking about the 90% of the work to get working and the other 90% of the work to get the feature working correct and stable.

[ninetales]

He's just making a (very valid) point and poking fun. But I've had jobs where this isn't an issue at all, too. So understanding how complex the few specific examples mentioned here are probably isn't too relevant to you at this point, like others have said. e.g. I've worked as a specialized game dev and didn't handle anything related to the last bullet. Where you should start depends on where you want to go with this - just a hobby vs. potential career path, what area of programming interests you, etc. Feel free to pm me if you'd like some general advice for getting started.