Comment by obviouslygreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by obviouslygreen | Hacker News Reader

"It's like being a competitive runner in training. You just hammer it as hard as you can so you'll be the best you can be at your races, but damn, it would be nice to just walk there sometimes instead."

Is it? Is 'programming' really like running a lot, from one place to another (no matter what those places are, simply for the fact that one place is not the same as the first)? Is it possible that this pursuit is so fucking stupidly simple that we can dilute it to "hey, programming is like walking to the fucking grocery store, regardless of which one we were going to or what we intended to get ingredients for, or how we wanted to prepare them"?

No. No, it's not, and this person is doing everyone who actually knows what the fuck a programmer DOES a disservice. If she stays with it long enough she'll realize this, though whether she'll bother to acknowledge it or apologize is another matter.

Being a competitive runner takes a lot of work, a lot of discipline, and a lot of conditioning. It is in no way something to laugh at. What it does NOT take, however, is the mental discipline and logical aptitude to build and maintain structures and paradigms in which concepts can be realized and business can be conducted.

It's an analogy. Yes, programming is more mental and less physical than running. Yes, analogies are and can be terrible.

But you're overreacting, even if we take your stance that she's somehow trivialized an entire field that she happens to think worthwhile enough to try and get into herself. No apologies are warranted. If they were, equating competitive running with walking to the grocery store would be at least as inappropriate. Regardless of whether or not that's what you mean to do, that's what you start with when you open up with your "dilution".

Though it's not my place to say, if you're as worked up as your text would portray, I'd suggest you're doing yourself a disservice. All over an offhand quote that got the wrong adjectives on the flavor of effort and skill involved with programming, by someone new to the field, who I'd suspect was merely trying to compare it to more familiar territory.

It's so easy to downvote. It's far harder to provide a good reason why we should be idolozing someone with the advantages most of us have absolutely no hope of enjoying should be idolized or idealized here, on a board where we supposedly worship the self-starter, the boostrapper, the one who understands the odds but still tries to beat them.

Downvote this one, too. Go for it... no one's stopping you.

Downvotes are sometimes accidental. Ignore single downvotes, they normally self-correct.

Complaining about downvotes will sometimes attract very many more downvotes than the original downvoted post.

I didn't downvote you, but your first post misunderstands a simple metaphor ("it's hard work!") and attacks it vigorously.

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