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.
“Just”
That one word has done a fuck ton of lifting over my career.
“Can’t you just make it do this”
I can’t “just” do anything you fuck head! It takes time and lots of effort!
It’s a meme to say “can’t you just” at my workplace
“Would you kindly”…
Also “simple”. “It’s a simple feature.”
Simple features are often complex to make, and complex features are often way too simple to make.
I believe that it’s not for nothing that simplicity is considered more sophisticated. Many, many cycles of refinement.
It’s like, gotta be just one line of code, right?
I worked in a post office once. I once had a customer demand some package delivery option, if I remember correctly. He was adamant that it was “only a few lines of code”, that I was difficult for not obliging, and that anyone in the postal service should make code changes like that on the whims of customers. It felt like I could have more luck explaining “wallpaper” to the currents in the ocean…
If this isn’t just a saying I haven’t heard of, I’m doing my best to make it a common place phrase, absolutely perfect in this context!
Thank you so kindly :) It’s not a saying, as far as I know.
I used to work on printer firmware; we were implementing a feature for a text box for if you scanned a certain number of pages on a collated, multi-page copy job. The text box told you it would print the pages it had stored to free up memory for more pages; after those pages had printed, another text box would come up asking if you wanted to keep scanning pages, or just finish the job.
The consensus was that it would be a relatively simple change; 3 months and 80 files changed — with somewhere in the ballpark of 10000-20000 lines changed, — proved that wrong.
Anything can fit in one line of you are brave enough.
Everything is one line of code in a turing machine.
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I like to say:
“Just” is a keyword that I’m going to triple my estimates. “Just” signifies the product owner has no idea what they are requesting, and it always becomes a dance of explaining why they are wrong.
I would have written that comment if you hadn’t already done it.
I don’t know exactly why people think that we can “just” do whatever they ask for.
Maybe it has something to do with how invisible software is to the tech-illiterate person but I’m not convinced. I’m sure there are other professions that get similar treatment.
I know you built the bridge to support 40 ton vehicles, but I think if we just add a beam across the middle here, we should be able to get 200 tons across this no problem? Seems simple, please have it done by Monday!
I get that from our product owners a lot, and I usually say “yes!”, followed by an explanation of how much time it will take and why it’s not the path we want to take. People respond well to you agreeing with them, and then explaining why it’s probably not the best approach.