What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?

The top-rated answer (by the submitter I think?) is excellent: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37316/what-do...

Try explaining being a DBA or a sysadmin - if we're doing our jobs right, no-one will even know we're there.

'Yeah, you're probably right.'

Don't you hate when your theoretical phisicist, mathematician, molecular biologist and rocket engineer friends do that.

I'd like to know what type of jobs the responders work. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of answers to "how demanding is programming" by users of different languages/frameworks or by what type of company they work at (startup, big corporation, etc).

If you get full control of the code base from the ground up, you can often make life easier for yourself (it takes work and continual refactoring, though). What's difficult is when you have to work through other peoples' messes.

I fire up Terminal, then stand up, offer my chair to them, say I'll be back later.

Making a superfluous statement is a red flag. In most cases I'd nod and move on.

"It depends" or "that's not entirely true"

It various, I know people who do little html and consider it programming. And obviously there are those in charge of huge software developments.

I say: "Shhh! Don't tell anyone, then they'll all want to do it!"

you do it

Of course, you ignore them!

The same thing as when people say that teaching is not demanding.

All the problems in the first answer are people problems. If you work in a software firm that doesn't treat its employees like code monkeys, or better yet, work for yourself, then programming isn't demanding. It's fun, relaxing, and awesome.

Sales is demanding. :S

Many times when I hear the "programming is very easy" claim it comes from someone who is out of work: "Oh, he say programming hard? Not so! Programming very easy! I do this job for you cheap!"