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What bizarre misconceptions do people have about your field? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by communism@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That you can quickly pick up coding with a few courses.

Can you learn it? Sure why not. Just keep in mind that you'll never stop learning, so it has to fit into your lifestyle.

Further, you'll have to be patient and be able to deal with stress well. If you can't adjust yourself to work in a team, you'll have difficulty finding work.

Another misconception is that coders stay alone at home in a dark room all the time. Coding is just one part of your life and people do all sorts of stuff.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah lots of people who aren't in tech think of coding as a solitary job, but it's a very social-skills-dependent job.

Social skills required to be a coder (at least; probably forgetting many):

Communicate complex concepts which have never been discussed before
Deliver things on time
Understand the tradeoffs of others' jobs well enough to make good decisions about when it's worth it NOT to deliver something on time (or be able to figure it out by communicating with whom you're delivering to)
Know the balance between asking for help and trying to figure it out yourself, including the short- and long-term tradeoffs of the two approaches
Know whether a problem you're encountering is your own lack of skill, your own lack of knowledge, your own lack of care, or someone else's any of those, and then communicate with others on the basis of being unsure of this
Deal with antisocial coworkers who can hide their shenanigans in the complexity of the code. I.e. if they're smart enough they can screw with your work, making you look bad, in a way that is extremely difficult to explain to non-technical management (and hence get support for)
Have the emotional stability and the hutzpah and the finesse to call things like this out when they do happen, and make those complicated explanations or deliver their abstract form
Understand and feel the pain of users when their systems break

As an autistic person, I struggled mightily with the social skill requirements of being a coder on a team. I ultimately failed. I'd like to go back and try again, after doing some really basic shit to improve my own character.