A wise man once said: “The only reason we should be writing code is to ensure we write less code tomorrow.” Although some die-hard programmers may argue against this, the software industry is increasingly leaning towards the creation of programs that can build applications without writing a single line of code.
There’s no dispute that traditional programming is a skill that isn’t easily mastered. Not everyone can be a programmer. You have to obtain a certain mindset. Like the painter or the sculptor, you are an artist that works with code. Like the mathematician who designs a beautifully crafted formula (E=MC2), you do the same, but with the help of code.
Yet, where we’re seem to be going, we don’t need code. And in some regards, that’s a good thing. Since not everything about programming is plain sailing. We asked the brightest programmers to help us make this list. This is what they really hate about coding:
01 People don’t get what you’ve created
Casually informing your non-developer friends about what you created can sound too mystifying for them. Coders know the feeling: you’ve been working on something for a while and, because you're super proud of that creation, you want to tell the whole world about it. The only problem, most people wouldn’t understand what you did.
Unlike your friend, who has - for instance - just mastered the solo of Hotel California on his guitar after painstakingly practising for days, he’s able to show off and people instantly get it. Wow, great stuff!
Or that other friend who works in physics and built himself a miniature version of a working Tesla Coil - Holy shit, that’s cool! But when coders start talking about the craftsmanship behind their code, people’s eyes often glaze over and they fall quiet.
02 Debugging (it sucks big time)
Even the most beautifully crafted lines of code tend to fall victim to bugs. Debugging is a normal aspect of a programmer’s job description. Developers devote a lot of time tracking down and fixing software defects. Sometimes those bugs are easily smashed. Other times, they can be so horrendously elusive that they take a lot of time to eradicate.
According to one frustrated programmer: “We write such big programs (even smaller ones sometimes) that during debugging, we go so deep that we forget what the original bug was.” This can lead to many ‘wasted’ hours of development time, not to mention seriously perilize a developer’s sanity.
03 Sitting at a desk for most of the day
Developers know the problem like no other: They sit behind a desk all day. It’s no wonder that sitting is regarded as the #1 silent killer. Getting up for a stroll every half hour isn’t going to give them enough exercise. It’s true that life as a coder can be an isolated, static, and unhealthy. As a way to outsmart this silent killer, our entire Betty Blocks office is equipped with standing desks.
04 No visible results
As another annoyed developer points out: “Often, there’s no visible result of my work of the day, nothing to point to and say: “I made that!” Just search through source code, trying to figure out how things fit together, and at some point - about four hours into the day - I burn out and either find something else useful to do or go home. Either way, nothing new is made, nothing troublesome has been fixed. Some people are fine with having visible results only once a week or less, but I thrive on visible tangible accomplishments every day.”
Ah yes, the hardships of being an old school developer...
05 It can be super frustrating
They say that acting is a tough job because of the relentless rejection. Programming is kind of the same, as your computer is always telling you that something is wrong. Coders have to be aware of the fact that they’ll get rejected constantly by their PC.
“Without any warning, twenty million things will go wrong throughout the process of getting the code to do this,” the developer explains. “From my experience, not every single thing that can screw up will screw up. But things that should just work will end up screwing up instead, causing even more problems than anticipated.”
06 It’s more constrained than you think
The focus of most programming is to follow a well-known recipe that was created by a handful of really smart people. In the words of another developer, who doesn’t like coding in particular (and that’s a big understatement):
“Programming is tedious. No, it’s *censored* tedious. This makes it impossible to be creative with code, because even conventional, common uses of code barely work. Coding is not yet at the point where you can just start writing it without a clear goal in mind. You can’t explore with code, you can only build with it. In oil painting, this is like only being able to paint a picture that you have clearly in your head already. It’s like every drop of color must be pre-planned and pre-calculated, and every random stroke that is made on the canvas will cause the entire canvas to catch fire.”
So, basically what it comes down to: Creativity is hardly possible with programming because randomness is hardly possible in programming.
07 All your (non-developer) colleagues seem to want something from you
With a big shortage of skilled developers, being a developer can be very rewarding. The average software developer makes an annual salary of about $60.000. If you work for one of the leading tech companies, the average pay could reach up to about $130.000 a year.
Because they’re in such high demand, developers have become the modern rockstars of our time. But the downside isn’t necessarily the risk of their lives spiralling out of control due to the seductions of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. No, it’s the huge backlog developers often have to deal with.
Everyone in their company - who isn’t a developer - seems to want something from them. The business needs a certain problem solved, and it’s often reliant on IT to fix it. So, with most IT departments being severely understaffed (partly due to those high payrolls), the developers often have to take on way more than they can chew.
Unicorns and rainbows?
So there you have it. Not everything about a developer’s life is unicorns and rainbows. According to many developers, programming itself is too unnatural and un-intuitive to be creative with. They vouch to make coding easier and more powerful to empower the creativity of many more people, make their own jobs a bit more pleasant, and cut back on wasted time.
In the words of the programmer: “Come on, people. Coding is a pain in the ass. It’s a pain in the ass way too often. You know it’s true. It’s time to debug this shit and focus on the impact of what we make, rather than how to make it.”
Perhaps a way to avoid these developer’s frustrations can be found in the realm of the no-code platforms. As they’re gaining traction in the tech scene, they seem to usher in a new age. An age when anyone can build complex applications without writing a single line of code. An age when debugging is no longer a big deal. An age when a new type of developer steps up to save the day. An age when everybody simply ‘gets’ application development…
