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What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by gianni@lemmy.ml to c/programming@programming.dev

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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.

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[–] 0xCAFE@feddit.de 63 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] wagesj45@kbin.run 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As always, there is an XKCD for that.

[–] infinitepcg@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The example given in the comic has moved from one category to the other. Determining whether an image contains a bird is a fairly simple "two hour" task now.

Plot twist: The woman in the comic is Fei-Fei Li, she got the research team and five years and succeeded 🤯

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well that's after thousands of people and 100s of millions in money

[–] infinitepcg@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Of course, but I still find it remarkable that the task that was picked as an example for something extremely difficult is now trivially easy just a few years later

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That is a pretty hard thing to do, to be fair. And the list of things that are easy sometimes makes big jumps forward and the effect of details on the final effort can be massive.

[–] 0xCAFE@feddit.de 3 points 9 months ago

You're right! Even for programmers.