Programmer Musings

"All you have to do is..."

What is it about the programming field that makes everyone believe that it is easy? I can't count the number of times I have had someone tell me:

• All you have to do is...
• How hard can it be? You just...
• It won't take that long. It's just a little program.
• etc.

Most of these people have never written a line of code in any language. Many of them only hve a vague idea of what a programmer does.

I sometimes wonder if other professionals get this. When a patient disagrees with a doctor's opinion, he may get a second opinion. I doubt he would say "All you have to do is a little surgery, how hard can that be?" When someone is hiring a company to build a house, they probably don't tell the contractor "Oh it couldn't possibly take that long. After all, I've told you everything you need to know. Just go build it."

When dealing with most professionals, you may not agree with their decisions, and you may go with a second opinion or, even a third; but you normally make the assumption that they know their field. They might not have all of the particulars nailed down in their first estimate. You don't expect them to change their estimates by a factor of ten just because you want it.

But in software development, this seems to be the norm. Customers, salesmen, and even some managers expect to be able to override a programmer's professional opinion on a whim. Some might say that our estimates are more fluid because no one understands software as well as, say, bridge building. I would point out that people rarely overrule a doctor's professional opinion, even though I've had my share of diagnoses that weren't any better than a wild guess.

In addition to the professional aspects of this problem, it spills over into everyday conversation. In my experience, people always seem to assume that what I do for a living is easy. They come up with an idea that will make them big bucks and I should be able to make it happen in a few days for less than a hundred dollars. Many of them seem offended when I don't volunteer to give up my weekends and evenings to make their dream a reality.

Even professional customers (and employers) want to be able to negotiate time estimates and costs. It seems they believe that their five minutes of thought means more than the years I have spent working in the field.

I know others have had this experience, and I would like to know: does anyone have a good technique for explaining this idea to a potential customer. How do we make people understand that the programs we write are real, even though you can't touch them? How do we get across the mind-boggling complexity of even relatively simple problems?

Maybe it's just that the field is so new that people don't have a grasp of what it takes. If I told you it would take me a year to design and build a new car from scratch. No one would try to convince me that it should only take 6 months. (Although, they might suggest I was nuts and it would take more like two or three.) So, why should a program with even more individual moving parts seem trivial.

It does tend to make one think.