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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

"We just need some software that does X", this is as reasonable as saying "we just need a building where we can do X".

People get this idea because they see companies create programs over and over. The same applies to buildings, building are created reliably over and over and over. If all that stands between you and success is a building, or some software, you're in a good place.

The difference is people have respect for the value of a building, they understand the cost, they understand the reason for those costs. People don't have the same understanding for software.

Nobody would say "I thought you could just throw a 4,000 square foot house together for me, it's nothing special, just a common house", but apparently some people will say "I thought you could just throw a website with a database together for me, it's nothing special".

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Respect is at the heart of the issue. Disrespect for programmers seems to be endemic and it results in people suffering needless indignities. Even their choice of words is offensive:

> throw a website with a database together

People who say stuff like that think we're monkeys who slap shit together until it works.

I don't know why software developers don't have practices with partners like lawyers, doctors and other professionals do. Seems like it would go a long way towards imposing some much deserved respect.

Lawyers, doctors and other professionals also have barriers to entry and can lose their license if they violate the rules of their trade. As long as any Tom, Dick and Harriette can call themselves a Software Engineer, it will be that much harder to get that respect.

One difference between lawyers/doctors and software "engineers" is that often it's okay to just hack something together in software. It's still work to hack something together though, so if I'm hacking something together for someone else they'll have to pay for my work.

I had a job working on an ecommerce site for a company that sold wine direct to consumers. On my first day, a coworker asked me, “What will you do when the website is finished?”

It was interesting to reflect on the misconceptions inherent in her question. The website is never finished. She didn’t understand that maintenance and upgrades are ongoing, and this is the nature of software.

That said, I do wonder if AI will make OP’s friend’s request seem reasonable. “Hey, ChatGPT, I just need an ecommerce site for a winery that sells to consumers. Can you walk me through how to build that?”

"Hey ChatGPT, there's a bug with the payment processing. I think their API has a breaking change. Can you fix it ASAP?"

"I'm sorry my knowledge horizon is the end of last year. Your site will have to remain broken until I'm updated."

It would be a miracle if a business owner was smart enough to ask this question, it would be unacceptable to not fix it immediately, and it would be impossible avoid this.

To the wrong kind of person you're identifying a sucker, not a big bad bully. I don't condone it, but I have definitely seen it. It's just as ignorant to not identify someone as naive at business as naive are the programmers who take on these kinds of projects.

The adult way to handle this is to say no and explain why they're crazy. Desperate people find each other regardless. Not dissimilar from other aspects of life.

> People don't have the same understanding for software.

To be fair, with houses, once you've actually built a 4,000 square foot house, you can just copy-paste it onto another person's plot of land, and maybe tweak it a bit as long as they aren't too picky about the layout and the geology is mostly the same. Also, if you're lucky you might be able to find a pre-built house on the internet and copy and tweak that, so you might get away with never learning how to build one from scratch in the first place.

Whereas with software, ... oh wait no, that was how software works, it's buildings that have to be re-built from scratch every single time, so people tend to actually understand what kind of endeavor they're asking for if they need one.

I meant people understand and respect that you have to pay for labor to build a house or a shed, but don't always understand that about software.

And if someone wants some software that is just a copy paste, I'm actually happy to help with that for free (use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, you're welcome), but if they want more than copy paste, yes, I would like payment for my work, just like if I was building a building.

To be fair, you can just buy an RV or camper trailer and plop it onto a piece of land. If you're ambitious you can get a trailer home plopped down. That we don't take more advantage of economies of scale for building is a travesty.

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