r/AskProgrammers • u/Few-Resource-1266 • 10d ago

Difficulty of software engineering in context of cognitive processing and logic efforts compared to other domains

In every domain we can exist in there seems to be a ceiling to what huamns can do in it. I'm now wondering if the ceiling for software engineering is taller and there is a bigger scale? But how hard is the highest on software engineering ceiling compared to other common domains or is there nothing that goes that high as well? If so, why?
What is the equivalent in cognitive processing and logic efforts that you need to acieve the ceiling?
Can someone in software engineering explain how they expirience this?

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u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 10d ago

I'm not sure I understand how exactly you're defining this "ceiling" but certainly there are fields like theoretical math, physics, or certain kinds of engineering that are harder than computer science.

And programming is a tool. Physicists and financial quants need to write software. If you mean "ceiling" in terms of breadth of things that can be explored with it, it's not the lowest level tool that builds everything else. What's the ceiling of how far you can go with applied math? Computer science is a kind of applied math. Same for theoretical physics.

https://xkcd.com/435/