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Sloan the DEV Moderator for CodeNewbie

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What Are the Biggest Misconceptions about Your Work?

Get a glimpse into the daily experiences, work routines, and unique perspectives of tech professionals, both novice and experienced alike, in "A Day in the Life."

What are the common misconceptions about your job? Or about tech work, in general?

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Top comments (9)

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

A very common myth among people who don't understand programming is that it's a job for guys that are good at math.

I ask them that if what matters is to be good at maths,
since girls clearly outpace boys at school,
why isn't there a majority of devs that are women ?

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mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

The same question, though, can be asked about gender ratio for professional mathematicians vs how good girls are at maths at school.

This doesn't demonstrate that you don't need to be good at maths, but that there's a lot of sexism.

I'm not good at maths though, so...

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

Lots of sexism and even more dumb marketing.

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tandrieu profile image
Thibaut Andrieu

Developper's job is writing code.

Developper's job is not about writing code. Developper's job is about understanding and formalizing problems, so it can be solved using existing solutions.

To respond to @jmfayard , I think people that are good at math are good at creating abstractions and formalizing problem. The misconception is what does it mean to be good at math.

As PoincarΓ© said:

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Which is actually very close to what we do as developers.

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gravy profile image
Grace Icay

A lot of people assume that testing is an easy job and it's for people who were not successful in becoming devs. I've even heard others go as far to say that QA testers are just dumb and only press buttons all day. :/

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alaindet profile image
Alain D'Ettorre

People think programmers mostly do the same work. In reality, it's very asymmetrical, as in "a few people do most of the work and most people do almost nothing"

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renancferro profile image
Renan Ferro

That doesn't get tired 🀣

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deozza profile image
Edenn Touitou

It's not because you are a programmer that you know how to make a printer work

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techmind profile image
Tech Mind

programming are for the epeople who have degree in IT.