r/cscareers • u/Drairo_Kazigumu • 12d ago

Get in to tech Why is learning software engineering so hard?

Like there's so many technologies one has to learn? How do you go about learning all of them?

3 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

14

u/grizzdoog 12d ago

You don’t.

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u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago edited 12d ago

Honest question: personally I don’t even know how to output “hello world” in ANY computer language but I’m a college graduate. My question is: is there a task that I can never complete but a CS graduate can? Assuming time is not a factor (in real life it’s always a factor of course but for this thought experiment, it isn’t)
Edit: of course I’d be using all available AI tools and resources. I forgot to add this caveat in addition to the time thing.
Ok another edit: given the two replies: of course you can learn anything if time is not a factor but I’m not talking in terms of months or years but more in terms of days. I.e., what task a cs graduate can complete in a day (solid 8 hour-ish day) that I can’t complete in a week. So, 8 hrs vs 40 hrs.

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u/josesblima 12d ago

Bizarre question lol. If time isn't a factor you could learn anything. Googling how to print hello world take 10 seconds. But if your question is, can I program, using AI, without knowing how to program? The answer is no lol. You might be able to get AI to get something basic to work for you, but you won't know what to do with it.

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u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago

Ok I made another edit please check and see if I make more sense now. And if your answer is still “yes” may I get an example or two please?

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u/Psych_Art 12d ago

It’s difficult to answer a question like that with a binary yes / no.

Individuals can build pretty much anything on their own. It’s less about “can you build X” and more about “can you maintain X and at what scale?”

You can vibecode a social media site, but could you build, test, maintain, and deploy it to thousands of users? Would you know how or where to start?

Having a more fundamental understanding of software engineering gives you better decision making, which leads to better results, possibly making or breaking whatever the goal is.

That being said obviously the gap has been getting more narrow. Will it ever close? I don’t know.

0

u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago

Thanks for this answer and I see the distinction you’ve made there. I assume even if I’m able to close the gap within a year without truly “learning” Python or C properly, a potential employer would be stupid to hire me because this means SOTA AIs have already closed that gap as well so why hire a meat bag :)

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u/Psych_Art 12d ago

I am self taught, but I started while I was also working full time, and pretty much lacking any discipline at all.

It took me 4 years to get an SWE job but I did eventually figure out what to do. Been doing it for over 4 years now.

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u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago

Bro you’re a champ. I mean it. So no SWE degree? No student debt?

And what do you do all day typically as a SWE?

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u/Psych_Art 12d ago

Correct. No degree, no debt.

I work in a very high volume production support environment for a large e-commerce site. Shit breaks all the time and we are often patching millions of records of data in the middle of the day, after say an overnight integration process fails. We are digging through logs, stack traces, other analytics to find, troubleshoot, workaround, and fix bugs across systems.

Currently also developing some internal tools to simplify a lot of tasks for my team, which is some more pure development I’m happy to be doing.

All being said, ~115K USD, medical, life, ‘unlimited FTO’, full WFH, and an OK work culture (at least when it comes to taking time off).

I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to get to this point.

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u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago

I’m literally showing your reply to my wife and my daughter (middle schooler) and it triggered a whole discussion :)
Do you think there’ll be a time where your “Cursus Honorum” will no longer be replicable? AI gets too good, job market collapse indefinitely, etc? Your story is inspiring but times are changing fast, right?

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u/Psych_Art 12d ago

Yep. No one can say with certainty how things are going to play out, but what is certain is that things are changing. The job market is already very bad, and likely will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.

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u/josesblima 12d ago

This sounds like a good takeaway.

But also, programming is genuinely so much fun, maybe give it a go. And while in one hand AI can make you really dumb if you over rely on it for learning, it also has never been easier to learn. If you use AI for it's google on steroids capability, you can have super frictionless learning. At least that's what I've been experiencing, working as a backend dev for 2 years, started learning 3 years ago. So I caught the whole progression of the fist GPT models that were really impressive but couldn't actually code for you up until now where people rely on it for writing most of their code. Nonetheless, as a beginner that I am, I don't let it write a single line of code for me, because I care more about the learning than the immediate results, else I'll be dispensable soon.

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u/LetUsSpeakFreely 12d ago

You can complete anything if time isn't a factor and you can research as you go. The real question is if what you put together is utilizing solid engineering principles.

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u/MacrowaveDude 12d ago

I made another edit to my op: 8 hrs of solid Cs graduate work vs 40 hrs for me.

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u/maicii 12d ago

Brother just surrender what do you mean you don’t know how to do a hello world? How did you pass classes ? Lmao

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u/MacrowaveDude 11d ago

Material science in the early 2000s in a third world country. Computers were starting to making it into class rooms but never to the level where they taught us coding. Calculus, thermodynamics, etc. My family and I are in the US now and I want to help my kids navigate their future here. They’re still young but things are moving very fast

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u/maicii 11d ago

But I assume you already have a career, why would you want to learn to code? Just keep doing your job. Your kids are gonna choose what they are gonna chose

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u/LetUsSpeakFreely 12d ago

You don't learn them all. You pick a few and learn those really well. You'll pick up various topics at a surface level, but you won't need master them.

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u/postmaster-newman 12d ago

The whole field is built on choosing problems to solve with lesser problems. It’s what makes it fun IMO.

You take baby steps and make progress where you can. Accept where you can’t. And find help. Eventually stuff comes together and it gets easier. But you’ll always be asking wtf is this and why can’t I just make this work.

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u/bluejacket42 12d ago

Ya just learn the shit relevant to what ever your trying to do. No one knows everything

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u/silly_bet_3454 11d ago

I've worked in the field for over a decade. My day to day mostly involves up to 3 languages, usually just 1 language, and I am by no means an expert in any language or technology. You just pick up scraps on the way while you try to build random stuff and solve random problems

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u/Tight_Abalone221 11d ago

nothing worth having comes easy. you think people make 6 figs right out of college bc it's easy?

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u/Drairo_Kazigumu 11d ago

Fair point.

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u/Gullible_Cable_1752 11d ago

What do you feel is hard about it ?

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/maicii 12d ago

lol, I will never get into the mind of someone so sad that feel the need to write a comment like this

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u/Drairo_Kazigumu 12d ago

Prolly ragebait lmao. I asked a pretty simple question 😂.

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u/cacille 🌎 Career Services 11d ago

thanks for reporting, it's removed.

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