Why programming is difficult (2014)
I agree that programming is difficult, but Im not sure he understands why he's finding it so difficult.<p>> "I Google a bit and after a while find a posting where some poor unfortunate soul has encountered exactly the same problem that I have. My heart leaps for joy. My trembling fingers enter the magic spell that will remove the curse, and ... nothing. The problem remains."<p>and<p>> "I'm lazy, I'm a good for nothing slacker. But when I want to put a diagram into LaTeX I don't want to have to read a 391 page manual first. Now I know you will accuse me of laziness and of being of unsound moral character,"<p>I wouldnt go so far as questioning his morality. But if you're not constantly focused on learning, even the minor details of the stacks you're working with, you'll increase the difficulty enormously. He sums up the danger of that attitude perfectly in his closing remark<p>> "Fortunately eleven minutes with the Google casino worked. The second suggestion of how to fix my problem worked - and I still don't know why emacs could not find aspell - and life is too short to find out why."<p>He's fixed it now. He has no idea what was wrong or how to arrive at a solution. Next time he faces, even the same problem, he'll be back on Google trying his luck.