Diffusion, what exactly is so bad about programming that made you ditch it in college?
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Diffusion, what exactly is so bad about programming that made you ditch it in college?
Its far too limited, its full of so much hassle. You know what they say, right? Programming is 10% programming and 90% bug-fixing. For so much of the time, youre not programming, youre not working on elegant solutions to problems, youre working around limitations in the language, the compiler, the platform... limitations exist because of somebody's foolish assumptions a decade ago.Quote:
Originally posted by Cloud
Diffusion, what exactly is so bad about programming that made you ditch it in college?
Ever look at a Windows program's code in C++? Even a basic one, one with a single window and a single pixel, is full of so many different API calls and so many different things, so much fucking grammer like calling handles and handles to pointers and all that nonsense that its just not worth it. Its not interesting, its not fun, and its not creating.
Visual Basic is not really programming if you ask me, but its fun because it takes away much of that tedium. It lets you focus more on the design. Even in a basic, DirectX program, there's so much crap going on that I dont know if anybody, including Strousop (the creator of C++) really knows everything that is going on.
Then, maybe after they teach you C++, you move on to Assembly language, in which you get to learn the wonders of moving around chunks of data into memory registers and shit like that. Then, after you've gotten good and comfortable with writing C++ (Im pretty good at C++, actually), you get to spend 3 hours writing an assembly language program that you could whip up in 15 minutes in C++.
I can only imagine what working as a professional programmer can be like: spending maybe two hours each week designing, creating, solving problems (all of this is quite fun). The remainder of your time is bug-fixing, fixing other people's mistakes, making workarounds for the 3D engine or physics engine you bought from company Y.
I like programming because its almost like growing a garden; the more work you put into it, the more you get out of it, and you can see a program mature as you put more time into it. Its really quite neat. Unfortunately, there's so much tedium, so much nonsense, so much slop, so much crap, so many limitations that you have to work through that its just not worth it. If youre not John Carmack or Tim Sweeney, you're almost certainly gonna have to spend a lot of your time dealing with the tedium, nonsense, slop, crap, and limitations.
Once I realized that, I got out of there fast. I spend time working on little projects in C++ or Perl or whatever, and theyre fun, but no way I could spend a career doing it.
Yeah that does sound kinda lame, but the only way to really know if you would like something or not is to experience it, so that's just what I'm gonna have to do. Thanks for the input though.