Gianni RFeb 26, 2024

What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it?

https://lemmy.ml/post/12422626

What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it? - Lemmy

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.

Show threadmoxFeb 26, 2024
The notion that creating a half-decent application is quick and easy enough that I would be willing to transform their idea into reality for free.
Show threadLungFeb 26, 2024

I’m pretty sure that government software always blows because they think software can be written according to a fixed schedule and budget

It’s tempting to think it’s like building a house, and if you have the blueprints & wood, it’ll just be fast and easy. Everything will go on schedule

But no, in software, the “wood” is always shape shifting, the land you’re building on is shape shifting, some dude in Romania is tryna break in, and the blueprints forgot that you also need plumbing and electric lines

Show threadjjjalljs

I have a hypothesis that a factor is that government needs to work for everyone.

A private company can be like “we only really support chrome”, but even people running ie6 at a tiny resolution need to renew their license.

Feb 26, 2024 at 2:04pmWeb
Show threadLithFeb 26, 2024
I believe this is usually covered by the fact that you can do just about anything you need to do over mail. I once ran into a government site that only worked on Edge.