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Comment by codesections | Hacker News Reader

I question the premise of this article:

> Why does it seem routinely acceptable—arguably fashionable—to make such a general and definitive statement [as "programming is hard"] ?

The implicit premise in ^^^^ is that people call programming "hard" more often than they call other fields "hard". I disagree.

Consider the following statements:

* teaching school is hard

* practicing law is hard

* playing the piano is hard

* playing baseball is hard

* painting is hard

* accounting is hard

* working retail is hard

* writing is hard

*none* of those statements strike me as less likely than "programming is hard". Pretty much everything (done decently) is fairly hard, and thus saying so does not seem remarkable.

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Piano is the best analogy to me.

If you sit down at a piano for the first time, the idea of ever playing a Chopin prelude seems almost impossible.

Of course it takes years of practice to gain competency, just like everything else in life.

This seems like a cultural flaw we have almost. We love to pretend people have all this effortless talent that they never had to work towards instead of putting value on the effort that got them to their level of mastery.

Many, if not most, people would not call any of those fields hard unless they were forced to practice it. A classic example is teaching, where some people seem to believe that bad teachers are bad because they are lazy (not that it requires skill). Even with law, those who claim it is hard focus upon the environment rather than the practice. (Law school is hard.) Pianist, there is lack of jobs. Baseball player, some may regard the training as gruling but not the game itself. Painting, a common excuse is a lack the creativity. Accounting, is seen as boring. Working retail, is regarded as being below them. Writing. Well, many seem to think it is easy yet few follow up by getting published.

Contrast that to STEM disciplines. Not only is getting there seen as hard, in the you need to be inherently good at it sense, but the practice is seen as hard, in the it is not worth the effort sense. On top of that, that accountant may take up baseball or painting as a hobby recognizing they don't have the ability (nor need the ability) to work hard since they will never practice it professionally. The majority of people who pursue STEM as a hobby already seem to be in STEM professionally.

STEM is hard since we can test for it. There are tons of bad teachers out there because they can be bad and we can't do much about it. But someone being bad at STEM is obvious and therefore all the bad people will get filtered out. That filtering is what people refer to when they say STEM is hard, the hard part is to not get filtered out, fields without such filters are not hard.

Of course even fields without filters are hard to deliver a lot of value in, but that isn't what people mean. A person being a teacher doesn't tell you anything about how good they are at teaching, but a person being a mathematician or physicist tells you a great deal how good they are at mathematics or physics.

> Many, if not most, people would not call any of those fields hard unless they were forced to practice it.

That's interesting – and very different from my experience. As I said in the GP, among people I know, pretty much no one would bat an eye at any of those statements; I'd expect more responses of "well, of course" than of "I disagree".

Maybe that's (sub?) culturally specific, though? I reside in the US – do you mind saying where you've lived when observing that people would not call those fields hard?

Urban Canada, so I would be a bit surprised if the responses would be all that different from the US. I have spent most of my adult life in education and recreation though, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm seeing particular biases.

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