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What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren't as familiar with it. It doesn't happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.

I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I can't do math for shit and I failed formal logic in uni. I'm not built for math. I just.... Don't care and can't make myself care. I've taught myself python over the past year and amd have become fairly comfortable with bash. Which has weirdly helped me with python?

Anyway I'm not very good at either yet. And there are huge gaps in my knowledge. But I'm learning every day.

I've done it on my own, and dove right into the fucking deep end with it which is probably the hardest way. But if I can do it then anyone can. You just need to want it. Why do I want it? I have no idea. If go crazy doing it for a living.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Learning more languages always helps understanding ime. I’d recommend learning C.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Learning python isn't jumping in at the deep end. Learning assembly or C would be the deep end. Also programming has little to do with maths anymore, and the maths you use for programming isn't the kind most people are taught in school.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

You're misunderstanding my use of the phrase.

I'm using it in the context or immersing in something you have no understanding of. I just dove right into and skipped most of the intro type stuff.

You're using the phrase to talk about relative complexity / difficulty not how I've usually heard it used but it makes sense.

Like. Most people learning python start with hello world. I spent too many hours learning to own hot encode a 500gb dataset of reddit porn and tweak stylegan 3 a bit to train it on porn. None of which is remarkable objectively but there were a lot of very basic things I needed to learn to finish the task. That's what I mean by jumping in the deep end - throwing yourself into something you are probably poorly or il equipped for and just figuring it out as you go.

There is a deep end of coding complexity of course, but, different kind of deep end.