Sloan's Inbox: What's the hardest thing about being a developer?

#discuss #learning #opensource

Howdy folks! Sloan, DEV Moderator and mascot, coming back at ya with another question submitted by a DEV community member. 🦥

For those unfamiliar with the series, this is another installment of Sloan's Inbox. You all send in your questions, I ask them on your behalf anonymously, and the community leaves comments to offer advice. Whether it's career development, office politics, industry trends, or improving technical skills, we cover all sorts of topics here. If you want to send in a question or talking point to be shared anonymously via Sloan, that'd be great; just scroll down to the bottom of the post for details on how.

Let's see what's on the docket for this week...

Today's question is:

What's the most difficult thing about pursuing a career in software development? What's the toughest thing that you deal with in your day-to-day and also what's the hardest thing you've ever had to do as a dev?

Share your thoughts and let's help a fellow DEV member out! Remember to keep kind and stay classy. 💚

Want to submit a question for discussion or ask for advice? Visit Sloan's Inbox! You can choose to remain anonymous.

Top comments (8)

Simon Green • Dec 17 '23 • Edited

I think I could write an essay on this topic. I mentored many junior devs in the roles I've had, and I think the top four are:

Developer who don't document there code, This is my number one issue with pull request. The person that writes the code know what they are doing. But the next person that has to work on that code has NFI but it.
The hardest part is not actually the actual writing of code, but taking a requirements document and turning that into something that does what it is meant to.
Writing secure code. I've seen junior devs too many times write something like query = f"SELECT thing FROM table WHERE column = '{var}'", which of course is a one way ticket to an SQL injection attack.
Developers who don't know how to code. An example is a script that had to get the fourth day of the previous month if the current date is less than the fourth. The person that wrote the code (before I started) simply took one off the current month. The script doesn't work in the first four days in January because 2023-00-04 is not a valid date!

Honourable mention also to devs not knowing basic Linux commands or things like git. I don't expect them to know everything, but the basics would be nice.

Matvey Romanov • Dec 14 '23

The most difficult thing is that your working day is not limited to 8 hours. You're always thinking about how to solve a problem or optimize some algorithm.

Cesar Aguirre • Dec 20 '23

...when you just go to bed or in the middle of taking a shower

Sachin • Dec 15 '23

IMO, the situation becomes hard for us when we can not apprehend it. And that applies to all the fields. Not just software development. It is a matter of knowing the game. The written and unwritten rules of the game. The more we get used to it, the easier it becomes to play. Then someday it becomes a child's play for us.