• jarfil@beehaw.org
    16·
    11 months ago

    Some time ago:

    • Me: “Programming is fun, but user interfaces are a PITA”
    • CS student: “What!? The algorithms I’m given to solve are really complicated!”
    • After a year on a job: “I hate testing user interfaces…”

    Some other day:

    • Me: “Programming is mostly copy&paste”
    • Engineering student: “What!? We have to come up with a new solution for every problem!”
    • After a year on a job: “I don’t program anymore, just copy&paste…”

    Told ya.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        7·
        11 months ago

        No matter what you work on, programming is one of:

        • Check the documentation for a library, copy&paste the interface call, fill in the blanks.
        • Pick the best algorithm for the case at hand, copy&paste, change a few variable names.
        • Get out your snippets archive, copy&paste the one you need.
        • Write some boilerplate, copy&paste over and over, then fill in the blanks.
        • Look up how someone else solved your problem, replicate it in a way that doesn’t look like copy&paste.
        • Once in a blue moon, come up against an actually novel problem, spend some days figuring out the best way to solve it… then copy&paste the solution back into the project.

        Doesn’t matter what you’re working on, in the end it’s mostly copy&paste 😂

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          I work on compilers (we can’t/don’t even have access to the C++ standard library in my case)… Most of the time, Google can’t help me ⚰️😅

          It was definitely a bit more copy and paste when I was working on web applications… But even then, most of the code I was writing was fairly novel / more application and database architecture problems than trying tying libraries together.