Comment by frendiversity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frendiversity | Hacker News Reader

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Yet industries like the game industry are dominated and run by non-technical business leaders who use this to their political advantage- to the point of driving programmers like slaves. "Programming games is fun, right? So you won't mind working over the weekend, right? If not, we'll get the new hires to take over your project." and so forth.

People might see that programming is tedious, but "everything you say can and will be used against you" as political leverage and they don't care what they see, only what they can use as proof to devalue the skill you have that they don't.

I'd like to see more blog posts entitled "programming is fucking hard" and "I bashed my brains out all weekend to show off this barely functioning hack and my kidneys ache from the caffeine overload."

False modesty for the sake of "making it look easy" might benefit you as an individual by looking cool or elite or levelheaded, but it devalues the skill commodity and community as a whole.

I also think that the majority of the population has absolutely no idea of the work involved in your typical program, which leads to, as one simple example: the stereotypical relative asking you to make his great App idea, with absolutely no concept that it would take 6 months of 12 hour days.

The problem is that other programmers don't care about posts like that, so they'd never be read. Or if they do read them it'll just be to tell you how completely idiotic you are for taking that long to figure that problem out. Or that they could have done it in a week. I don't know about you, but I enjoy reading articles about people succeeding and enjoying what we're all doing. Like, if you were pushing shopping carts would you rather read about people surfing on top of them or bitching about how terrible their lives are?

If you enjoy reading those articles so much, would you mind scanning through this pile of old newspapers I've got in my garage? I'll let you do it for $20.

I'm not sure that I understand the point you're trying to make.

I don't have to make a point, I just have to cut down your argument with some evidence you agree with.

This is how you con programmers into writing programs for you. I have watched it happen half a dozen times now.

No, I'm not saying you have to make a point but you have to at least make sense. What you said meant nothing to me, so I was asking for clarification, but you're obvious not looking for communication here.

That's correct, I am not looking for communication. I am simply frustrating your ability to make a valid argument. Inevitably I can use this tactic to persuade you to do something for me.

I think this is a real issue, but is separate from the original point of this thread. The same thing happens to a much larger degree to artists, musicians, and all sorts of creative types. It's a job that enough people enjoy that there's a large supply of employees and at least some of them are willing to accept hard hours or mediocre pay in order to do what they love for a living.

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