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		Seven frustrating things about being a programmer; a few actually don't involve end users (itworld.com)		226
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Voiceofreason01		2013-02-14 08:23:00 AM

Did everything make the list?

EatHam		2013-02-14 08:51:25 AM

Open workspaces that "foster teamwork". There is room on this keyboard for two hands, and they are at the end of my arms. Teamwork is what the standups and collaboration are for. When I need to do actual work, fark off and leave me alone.

slayer199		2013-02-14 09:45:15 AM

"People assuming you can fix any computer-related problem " Really? Programmers are the most PC-Illiterate people I know in IT.

End users not providing enough information about bugs and People ignoring documentation and Project managers ignoring or understating time estimates to complete a task or project - This doesn't just apply to programmers...but anyone in IT.

EatHam: Open workspaces that "foster teamwork". There is room on this keyboard for two hands, and they are at the end of my arms. Teamwork is what the standups and collaboration are for. When I need to do actual work, fark off and leave me alone.

THIS! I find low cube walls and open workspaces distracting. If teamwork is required, we have meetings for that.

Because People in power are Stupid		2013-02-14 10:48:12 AM

Scope Creep

laxallstars.com

UberDave		2013-02-14 10:49:05 AM

End users not providing enough information about bugs

I deal with this at least twice a week...for a large problem. You need to describe the steps you performed to get to the problem. "When I press 'Save' the application crashes" doesn't tell me shiat. Especially if the application performs 10 different distinct operations and has over 300 controls.

"...the less I wanted to put code in the database; it made code debugging and maintenance a royal pain. "

In VS you can step right into a stored procedure from your app code *if* you have Windows Authent for SQL Server and the Oracle .NET plug-in for VS (when using Oracle). Personally, it's always obvious when there's a stored procedure or trigger problem. When that happens, I just use PL/SQL dev.(for Oracle...or you can use TOAD...whatever) or VS for SQL Server. This shouldn't be a problem. My enterprise app suite has an ass-ton of database code.

Mugato		2013-02-14 10:49:06 AM

Programming is farking boring should be near the top of the list. I wasted 4 years of my life being a programmer when I've always really wanted to be a filmmaker. I just thought that software development was a more responsible pursuit. But I quit my job, went to film school and will probably die alone in a gutter but at least I'm not a code monkey. It helps that I don't have a family to support.

dletter		2013-02-14 10:52:06 AM

slayer199: "People assuming you can fix any computer-related problem " Really? Programmers are the most PC-Illiterate people I know in IT.

But, that IS what most non-technical people think. I mean, my 7-year old daughter when you ask her what I do amusingly says I am a "computerist". Not as amusingly, it is the impression I get that that is the extent that most other adults think of what i am as well. Granted, most programmers are still more "savvy" about computer issues than the average person who just knows enough about technology to surf the web and maybe open up a word file. But, it still doesn't mean that most programmers are operating system "experts", or know how to diagnose problems on every piece of equipment ever made.

dletter		2013-02-14 10:55:31 AM

And this classic Onion article fits this discussion....

http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-computer-totally-hates-me-vs-god -d o-i-hate-that,11538/

UberDave		2013-02-14 11:02:48 AM

Because People in power are Stupid: Scope Creep

Once you accept it and prepare for it every time, it will not be so bad. :)

show me		2013-02-14 11:46:23 AM

I have been doing this shiat for 25 years and I had experienced almost all of these by the end of the first month.

Rapmaster2000		2013-02-14 11:56:15 AM

People ignoring documentation

People will always ignore documentation. Get over it. The point of documentation is to CYA.

SlothB77		2013-02-14 11:57:00 AM

People assuming you can fix any computer-related problem - Knowing the people I know, though, I probably can.

Because People in power are Stupid		2013-02-14 11:57:49 AM

UberDave: Because People in power are Stupid: Scope Creep

Once you accept it and prepare for it every time, it will not be so bad. :)

You don't work for my boss.

Dinjiin		2013-02-14 12:12:04 PM

Because People in power are Stupid: Scope Creep

That's a problem with any project, not just with computer programs. Just make sure you have a really good discovery phase and then make it painful to introduce new requirements.

fluffy2097		2013-02-14 12:25:03 PM

I imagine that being a pedantic asshole like most programmers are is the most frustrating thing ever.

I don't even know how they sustain such levels of pedantry all day long.

I love how he says he doesn't know how how to fix your computer, but if you buy him beer he'll magically be able to. Classic programmer. Unable to even man up and say "I know how to fix it but you'll have to pay me to make it my job."

NathanAllen		2013-02-14 12:32:40 PM

If he hates overzealous Scrum Masters and strict "Stand Ups" then he should try coming over to the PM side at a Waterfall Company. Nothing screams stress like using a Project Model that is best represented by Management urinating at will and the rest of us running around with a mop bucket to clean up the mess.

grinding_journalist		2013-02-14 12:35:05 PM

No doubt that most of you people who aren't programmers, or have never been programmers, look at those of us who are or were programmers and think, "Boy, that's gotta be a great job. Exciting, fast paced, highly compensated, well respected and, above all, extremely sexy. What's not to love about being a programmer? I wish I was one."

I am not a programmer and have never thought anything like this. I always imagined programming to be something along the lines of sitting at a desk or in a cube with a window on a screen open that could be mistaken for text edit, poring over lines of code that look like they're in a foreign language, working on a single piece of a larger program, while the boss comes by and says that there have been revisions, and your past week's worth of work is now irrelevant.

XMark		2013-02-14 12:40:15 PM

Worst thing: having to make changes to an old system originally done by a programmer who used a single space for indents in PHP code, never indented any of their HTML code at all, and coded with the absolute minimum amount of whitespace possible, jamming everything together so tightly it's damn near undreadable.

InmanRoshi		2013-02-14 12:40:28 PM

Project managers ignoring or understating time estimates to complete a task or project

This is merely a symptom of a bigger disease of programming ... that being, the people who manage/oversee programmers often (thankfully not always) don't have a background in programming themselves, or if they did it was a thousand years ago on antiquated/irrelevant platforms. Good programmers are too valuable, unwilling or personally ill-equipped to transfer management positions Who fills those positions? Ambitious bullshiat artists who attended an IT Project Management conference for a $10k framed certificate to hang on the wall and a bevy of hi-tech word salad mumbo jumbo to hypnotize upper/executive management with.

Thankfully I'm in a position in my career and skillset where I can be particularly choosy about who I work for. In any interview, I want to know specifically about the backgrounds of the project managers and the IT management. If I see a lot of people with fake tans and capped teeth and manicured nails talking about "cloud technology" and "cross platform synergy" I run for the hills.

poisonedpawn78		2013-02-14 12:42:38 PM

grinding_journalist: No doubt that most of you people who aren't programmers, or have never been programmers, look at those of us who are or were programmers and think, "Boy, that's gotta be a great job. Exciting, fast paced, highly compensated, well respected and, above all, extremely sexy. What's not to love about being a programmer? I wish I was one."

I am not a programmer and have never thought anything like this. I always imagined programming to be something along the lines of sitting at a desk or in a cube with a window on a screen open that could be mistaken for text edit, poring over lines of code that look like they're in a foreign language, working on a single piece of a larger program, while the boss comes by and says that there have been revisions, and your past week's worth of work is now irrelevant.

And then asks what have you been doing with your time .

You pretty much nailed it.

InmanRoshi		2013-02-14 12:46:21 PM

grinding_journalist: No doubt that most of you people who aren't programmers, or have never been programmers, look at those of us who are or were programmers and think, "Boy, that's gotta be a great job. Exciting, fast paced, highly compensated, well respected and, above all, extremely sexy. What's not to love about being a programmer? I wish I was one."

I am not a programmer and have never thought anything like this. I always imagined programming to be something along the lines of sitting at a desk or in a cube with a window on a screen open that could be mistaken for text edit, poring over lines of code that look like they're in a foreign language, working on a single piece of a larger program, while the boss comes by and says that there have been revisions, and your past week's worth of work is now irrelevant.

Pretty much. Except replace "past week's" with "past two year's"

nmemkha		2013-02-14 12:51:25 PM

1. Users
2. Executives
3. Users again
4. Clueless managers
5. Lazy co-workers

Summoner101		2013-02-14 12:52:27 PM

dletter: And this classic Onion article fits this discussion....

http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-computer-totally-hates-me-vs-god -d o-i-hate-that,11538/

lulz

Reminds me of the old joke about the guy who'd be a millionaire if he could invent a program that allowed him to punch someone in the face over the internet.

traylor		2013-02-14 12:55:31 PM

The most frustrating things in 13 years:

1. Working for 1 year at my job developing games for mobiles in a very experienced C++ team with one very successful game even, the bosses decided that suddenly we will move to Java. The company closed in three months.

2. I had a boss once who was both untalented and hard-working. So most of the team was searching for bugs and fixing them 10 hours a day.

3. Junior programmers.

Burr		2013-02-14 12:57:33 PM

poisonedpawn78: grinding_journalist: No doubt that most of you people who aren't programmers, or have never been programmers, look at those of us who are or were programmers and think, "Boy, that's gotta be a great job. Exciting, fast paced, highly compensated, well respected and, above all, extremely sexy. What's not to love about being a programmer? I wish I was one."

I am not a programmer and have never thought anything like this. I always imagined programming to be something along the lines of sitting at a desk or in a cube with a window on a screen open that could be mistaken for text edit, poring over lines of code that look like they're in a foreign language, working on a single piece of a larger program, while the boss comes by and says that there have been revisions, and your past week's worth of work is now irrelevant.

And then asks what have you been doing with your time .

You pretty much nailed it.

But when it compiles you get to do this...

imgs.xkcd.com

I work for an "engineering services company". Basically, we do CAD Software support. Somehow, somebody learned that I took some intro Java and C++ classes in college (as a requirement) and now I am the resident code monkey. Granted, my knowledge of the matter is very limited, but apparently I am doing something right, since I survived another round of layoffs.

Of course, most of the time I look like I am doing nothing (since most of our business is very visual by nature) because I am staring at text all day trying to debug something while everybody else is designing 3D models and whatnot (in an open environment even....damn it I need a hole to crawl in while at work).

Fubini		2013-02-14 01:03:26 PM

I gotta say, four-space tabs are way too big. It's hard to even read a triply-nested for-loop, much less a quadruply-nested or more. Two-space tabs are the way to go.

Rwa2play		2013-02-14 01:12:37 PM

traylor: The most frustrating things in 13 years:

1. Working for 1 year at my job developing games for mobiles in a very experienced C++ team with one very successful game even, the bosses decided that suddenly we will move to Java. The company closed in three months.

Problem with Corporations = The bosses who know fark all about common sense and rely on what they learned in whatever business courses they took.

PainInTheASP		2013-02-14 01:12:58 PM

Pfft, four space tabs? There is only ONE tab character that anyone should EVER need.

vbTab

If you use anything else, you're doing it wrong.

bark_atda_moon		2013-02-14 01:13:47 PM

1. Little to no requirements
2. Software solutions in search of problems
3. Arbitrary deadlines
4. The hot new thing ("We want to store our customer information in the CLOUD")

dletter		2013-02-14 01:13:47 PM

Fubini: I gotta say, four-space tabs are way too big. It's hard to even read a triply-nested for-loop, much less a quadruply-nested or more. Two-space tabs are the way to go.

That was by far the weakest thing on his list.... it was basically whining over other people not liking his personal preference.

gingerjet		2013-02-14 01:13:48 PM

8. Being a programmer.

dj_spanmaster		2013-02-14 01:14:18 PM

slayer199: Project managers ignoring or understating time estimates to complete a task or project

Because People in power are Stupid: Scope Creep

Right on.

Fubini: I gotta say, four-space tabs are way too big. It's hard to even read a triply-nested for-loop, much less a quadruply-nested or more. Two-space tabs are the way to go.

I play by KISS, so the simpler the code, the better. If I'm going more than four brackets deep in a function, it's probably too complicated. Abstracting out the loops helps with this, so that even if it ends up programmatically behaving quad looped, it's easy to read and understand. Four-space tabs helps enforce this - running out of left-aligned screen real estate means it's getting overly complicated.

gingerjet		2013-02-14 01:15:37 PM

Fubini: I gotta say, four-space tabs are way too big. It's hard to even read a triply-nested for-loop, much less a quadruply-nested or more. Two-space tabs are the way to go.

Good fark'n grief - this debate is still going on? I remember programmers biatching about 3 versus 4 space tabs back in the fark'n 80s.

/got out of development in the early 90s
//simply no reward in that profession

lordargent		2013-02-14 01:15:46 PM

Tabs/indents set to anything other than four characters - This was my own personal preference. Four characters just looked right when reading code; anything else looked wrong and made me want to fix it.

use five characters you mother farking troglodyte

That way, multi-indendted blocks end up breaking at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 characters, you know, something logical ... that matches our currency system

Hey bob, indent that block a dime.
Man, this code is a quarter deep.

4 characters gives you 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, that's some farked up shiat.

XMark		2013-02-14 01:21:27 PM

Two-space tabs, using actual spaces to make the tabs. Every other way is heresy!

dj_spanmaster		2013-02-14 01:21:38 PM

Dilbert calls it.

Krowdaddy Chixdiggit		2013-02-14 01:24:29 PM

Who cares about this list.....I have been coding for a living for a few years now and the one thing I have noticed about myself since I started is that my alcohol intake has increased every year......

Dreyelle		2013-02-14 01:27:15 PM

1. Lack of clear requirements
2. changing requirements on the fly ("that's not a big change")
3. Expecting me to do all of your testing for you
4. Creating a project plan without input from developers and then blaming the developers for the delay.
5. Including all the "little cosmetic issues" that bother you into a single bug fix so it becomes never ending.
6. Forcing me to work with smelly H1-Bs

enigmaticsource		2013-02-14 01:30:03 PM

Fubini: I gotta say, four-space tabs are way too big. It's hard to even read a triply-nested for-loop, much less a quadruply-nested or more. Two-space tabs are the way to go.

God bless you sir... or rather, use a farking tab, you moron, and let my editor decide what size it should be.

studebaker hoch		2013-02-14 01:34:13 PM

AMark

Two-space tabs, using actual spaces to make the tabs. Every other way is heresy!

Fist bump.

InmanRoshi		2013-02-14 01:34:21 PM

The first time you destroy your body and spirit working 60-100 hour work weeks making deadline on a product that lasts 1-2 years in production before the newly hired exec wants it arbitrarily scrapped and re-written to mirror the system they're familiar with from their previously employer, you learn to take your living human soul and hold it down and drown it in the proverbial bathtub. Once you've eliminated any belief in a benevolent or just universe, it's not a bad way to pay the bills.

MrCrazyInsane		2013-02-14 01:35:33 PM

Is "the inability to grasp networking sorcery" on the list?

/it's not the network. Never is.

Nexzus		2013-02-14 01:37:56 PM

/Worked better in my head.

lordargent		2013-02-14 01:38:00 PM

enigmaticsource: God bless you sir... or rather, use a farking tab, you moron, and let my editor decide what size it should be.

One of our properitary tools generates code using spaces instead of tabs.

// If I work on a project, I always clean up the generated code, other folks, not so much.

// A side effect of this is that stuff from offshore will have code that contains a mix of tabs and spaces (sometimes on the same line). You see, the code generator generates a block of code (with spaces) and then the programmer will edit that code (and indent that code again using a tab).

daveinsurgent		2013-02-14 01:38:29 PM

Dealing with the kind of bad programmers in this thread.

rogue49		2013-02-14 01:40:17 PM

1. I have a vision
2. How is that done?
3. Why are you doing it THAT way?

But the most is because of "unrealistic expectations"

Asking me on a Friday to load 2.5 TB of data into 250 undefined tables, from 1500 files in 7 different areas.
Defining all column names, datatypes, build all indexes, partitioning, etc.
And expecting it on Monday.

/is it done yet?

ProfessorOhki		2013-02-14 01:41:07 PM

slayer199: "People assuming you can fix any computer-related problem " Really? Programmers are the most PC-Illiterate people I know in IT.

In all fairness, most the PC questions you usually get from friends and family are like "Where did my blue E go?" and "Can they really tell if I don't forward this e-mail to 20 different people?"

PainInTheASP		2013-02-14 01:41:35 PM

MrCrazyInsane: Is "the inability to grasp networking sorcery" on the list?

/it's not the network. Never is.

What the hell do you expect me to blame all the random bugs in my code on then? Do you want me to tell the truth?!?

Besides, the network admins are on the other side of the campus. They'll never hear about it anyway and if they do what's the worst that can hap

enigmaticsource		2013-02-14 01:45:05 PM

lordargent: One of our properitary tools generates code using spaces instead of tabs.

// If I work on a project, I always clean up the generated code, other folks, not so much.

"s/[ ]{2}/\t//" for various values of two is about the first thing I run when I have to look at code.

divx88		2013-02-14 01:46:41 PM

Scope creep & project managers that think hacking together something to make the shiny button appear NAOW!! is more important than doing it proper the first time. Of course said project managers are usually answering to less knowledgeable/informed business pieces that just want a shiny button.

Bad user feedback a programmer issue. Unless you have a professional QA staff to back you, need to build in mechanisms to catch data when things explode. Even with a professional QA staff, if you have time to build said nifty tools, it's best you do. Plus if you have time to do unit testing and other nifty testing related things, it helps even more.

/ fark your shiny button!

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