Having also done both: In legal drafting work, there's less systematic pre-release testing before the equivalent of a "program" is loosed upon the world. There's not much in the way of counterparts to software unit testing and regression testing, in part because legal-drafting clients can be vociferous in demanding that their lawyers keep costs down.
Lawyers who like to tinker with words can fuck things up more often and at greater scale — e.g., by inflicting compulsory burdens and costs on others — than can most programmers. That includes, e.g., contract drafters and litigation counsel, plus lobbyists trying to influence draft legislation and regulations.
I'm not-infrequently dismayed by the quality of the contracts I review for clients because of the "tinkering with words" by the lawyers on the other side of the deal. Back when I did IP litigation, I was sometimes likewise dismayed by the bullshit arguments that some lawyers felt free to make in their court papers because what the hell, the worst that can happen is almost never more than the judge just saying "no." And as mostly a law professor these days, I review court opinions all the time and am regularly amazed how judges (and their law clerks, such as Rayiner used to be) can be so patient in responding to such arguments.
Yeah, at least in litigation you get relatively immediate feedback in the form of a decision. Seems anxiety inducing to me to draft these contracts and have no feedback loop unless something blows up years later.
(I guess by now you have a solid retirement plan; maybe if the field had been burnt to the ground while you were younger, you'd have had a different opinion.)
I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.
The older I get, I realize some people never change, will always have the same backwards or harmful thinking, and I avoid them instead of just accepting it.
Sadly, it seems so, even if the effects of the jobs on daily life differ a great deal sometimes. The world would succumb faster if we had no garbage collectors, yet they get less pay than a programmer who the world could easily survive without? Makes no sense to me.
The skills necessary to develop efficient and effective software are much more scarce than those needed to remove trash, or pick crops, or provide elder care. That’s why the former is paid so much more.
Even take some sort of idealized anarcho-communal society. Imagine two people have a dispute and threaten to leave over it. One's a highly skilled doctor, and the other's a garbage collector. Our equal society's going to suddenly become just as unequal as any other simply because the doctor leaving would have a much greater negative effect than the garbage collector. And that reality would permeate in the day-to-day happenings, creating classes even in an idealized classless society.
"Programmers aren't really paid, they sell services at market prices." — I guess nobody gets paid?
As a farmer myself, when I give someone something I produced and they give me back something in return, I consider myself to be paid. If I did not receive much value in return for what I gave, I'd reasonably consider myself to have not been paid well. I have never met a farmer that would consider that usage unusual. Payment refers to a transaction within the realm of a human activity. The good or service that is being traded between humans is immaterial. While you are free to define words as you see fit, your assertion doesn't really reflect how this is actually used in practice, generally. The rest of the earlier comment makes it clear that the commenter understands how a farm business works.
PS To the "clear-thinking" guy at the top of this thread...this is why...you only think your thinking is clear. If its a topic you know nothing about, devs (not necessarily you) tend to assume there isn't anything to know and that's almost never true.
It is easy to accidentally press the button and not notice, though.
</sarcasm>
One interpretation, which is what I suspect most would go to, is where one's income is primarily derived from owning stock. So, in other words, old, retired people. But I don't think anyone here was thinking about the retired. The discussion was about people actively producing food and software.
Another possible interpretation is about impact. If those stocks didn't exist, a lot of the capital wouldn't have been able to be created, and thus there wouldn't have been jobs to go with it; meaning that owning the capital makes it one's main function as without it one wouldn't have a job to go to. But I can already hear you furiously typing how that isn't a satisfactory take. I'd agree.
Maybe it's about attention? Someone who actively watches over to their capital would be seen as it being their main function, while someone who leaves their capital ownership up to a financial advisor so they don't have to think about it wouldn't. But then we're back to the computer. Most programmers watch over that capital, if nothing else. That doesn't really work either.
The only remaining interpretation I can come up, given the connotations often associated with landlord, is a group of people not like by another group of people. But that doesn't have anything to do with capital at all, so... Consider me stumped on what this has to do with the discussion (if we are to ignore the explicit sarcasm involved).
Isn't Elon Musk's main function in society court jester — to make a fool of himself for our entertainment? That is what he does in my timeline. Perhaps we exist in different universes.
The reason you think that is that you know nothing about agriculture. But it isn't true. Right now, farmers in the US grow about 5x as much food per acre as farmers in other countries. If you were in charge of farming in the US, that surplus would likely disappear in a single season. You would also likely damage the soil which would make cleaning up after you take 4-6 years.
Everyone thinks things they know nothing about are easy. But they rarely are.
PS This is why I never tell people I'm a programmer. I don't want to be associated with people who think like you.
I don't agree that all thoughts are created equal.
(This did not happen that much, ofc.)
It's also funny to me to think that computer science got to be a trendy degree, vs the small programs back when I went to university, even at a top comp-sci school.
I have a theory that a lot of people who would have normally gone to Wall Street for their lucrative jobs, couldn't, because of the crash, and Sillicon Vally was about to start booming in big ways....
We need to make lawyering more like programming, in the sense that it should be open to the everyman... not make programming credentialed and licensed like a professional guild.
I do notice a lot of HN commenters seem to think that programmers are smug though, like we deserve to be knocked down a peg. I personally don't see it, but I also try not to work with jerks.