Practical Web Programming

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Drawbacks Of Being A Programmer

I admit, programming is enjoyable for me. I can't imagine myself doing another job than programming (or at least very related to programming, analysis or consultancy).

There are many perks of being a programmer. One of which is you get to surf the internet, update blogs, a chance to make people's work easier and many other things. But mind you, there are also many drawbacks of being a programmer.

Here are some of my list:

1) Maintaining Other Programmer's Program

Maintaining other programmer's program is not really difficult if it's programming style follows the basic characteristics of a "good" program: (1)reliable, (2)maintainable, (3)user-friendly, and (4)meet functional requirements.

If you are tasked to maintain a program that do not meet this basic requirements and the coding is style is so college-like, it makes you think, "What is this? A college final project". (^_^)

2) Nervous(or Idiot?) Users

I have encountered my complains from users where in they said they can't login to the program, it turned out that they forgot their password. The worst is, if the user's PC is in another building and when you get there, all it needs is a system reboot. (GRRRRRR)

3) Limited Resources

It is very frustrating for a programmer to not being able to do his job due to limited resources. When I was a programmer at a research project, the first month I don't have my own PC because they're still purchasing it. It makes me think, "What am i doing here?"

Update:

4) Demanding Users

A do-this-do-that type of user always irritate me. They think just sitting there in front of the PC the for 8 hours is easy.

I'm sure there are more drawbacks of being a programmer that I didn't mention here. We'll, it's all I can remember. If you know one, please add it in the comment section. (^_^)

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if it's a drawback but: programming is highly addictive. Means, even if you don't like the company or the project, the money is a pity and your pc is Pentium II you cannot let loose long time after leaving work. And you can't wait coming back to make just this little loop more effective. Does this happen to taxi drivers too?

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