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What is the best part of being a software developer?

Ben Halpern on April 05, 2022

Thank you to everyone who weighed in about the most frustrating part of software development in yesterday's discussion.

Let's flip the script, what's the best part about this work?

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Ashwin Hariharan • Edited

Not to say that everyone can do it, but software development seems to offer the most level playing field than any other career - and it's only getting better!

The fact that it's possible for someone in any part of the world, with minimal resources (a laptop and an internet connection), to not only learn software development but also actually earn a decent living and level up seems to me the best part about this line of work.

And I'm very grateful to be a part of it. 😇

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Brad

I have a saying to anyone who wants to get into the field.
That it takes only 3 things:

  • time
  • grit
  • an internet connection

Each person might require different amounts of each, or lack access to one or more of them. But to those that have those three it really can work with enough time and effort. :)

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Yussuf Mussa • Edited

Being paid beyond borders

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Alex Lohr

You never run out of things to learn.

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davideo profile image
davidecheta599

Exactly, those things are always available for you to learn 😊

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Geof

Yeah! that's right buddy.

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Max Ong Zong Bao

You scratch your own itch. If you had entrepreneurial streak, you don't have to find a developer to build things for you. You just need a good sales and marketing or you do it yourself.

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atulcodex profile image
🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

As written in "Rich Dad Poor Dad" book

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Gabriel Pedroza

I love just being able to create things that people from around the world can see. It's also many companies that mostly offer remote positions which is great because people can travel around the world and see their families whilst contributing to your career and job. I've started a little more than a year ago when I switched my major to Comp Sci (was majoring in Accounting) and I truly believe that it was and still is the best decision for me. I recommend everyone to just look into it and try programming for x amount of time to see how you feel about it.

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Oskar Pietrucha

For me it's the part where your software is actually being used by other people, and they are enjoying using it. I work for a aircraft engines company and seeing that people on the production site like using the application I wrote then it fills my heart with joy that I've actually helped them.
A different thing I love about being a software engineer is the fact, that we can always look for different job in a different country and still will probably succeed, we can work from the office, at home or in a hybrid mode. We can work being an employee or by invoicing other companies.

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atulcodex profile image
🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

Wow, Your experience is mind blowing. Thanks for sharing bro.

Keep it up!

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Parker Waiters

For all the possible frustration, it's still some of the most interesting stuff they'll pay you to do (or that you can do in your spare time).

The best version of my job is way more interesting than the best version of almost any of my friends' jobs.

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Matt Ellen

The feeling when you figure it out.

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atulcodex profile image
🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

I feel very calm :)

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metacollective
  1. I get to work with some of the most innovative & smartest people I have ever met
  2. I love the wider community feel I get from platforms like dev.to, not sure you can get this on any other profession
  3. It is one job, where if you put your mind to it, you can actually make a difference (think social projects like app.code4socialgood.org/project/li..., socialcoder.org/Home/Index etc)
  4. Pays well :|
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Brent • Edited

The things that always jump out to me:

  1. It's all the creative and technical satisfaction of engineering, but without many of the constraints of engineering in the physical world. It's hard to "refactor" a bridge after you build it or change the logic of a digital circuit once it's been etched into silicon. Software development is engineering and building and problem solving with a fluidity not found in most other engineering domains. We actually can (not that we always should) tear it down and start over or pull out a load bearing column(ar data store) just to see what happens and put it back together again just as easily.

  2. It's truly a cross-domain/cross-industry career. While the fundamentals of software development remain fairly consistent or at least move slowly, we can pick up our skills and move to new industries on a whim. In the 20 years-ish I've been doing this, I've had the privilege of working on everything from Martian rovers and cloud computing infrastructure to cybersecurity tools and video games. It's amazing to be able to gain so much breadth of knowledge in so many areas.

  3. That sense of accomplishment when it actually works like you designed it to. 20 years later and that's still one of the things that keeps me going. The "ah-ha!" moment of figuring out a complex bug or the satisfaction of stepping back from the keyboard and watching the complex virtual machinery do exactly what it's supposed to. It never gets old for me.

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Jeremy Friesen

The best part of being a developer is that I get to work in Emacs even more of the day!

Snark aside, it's having the "means of production" at my disposal. It's relatively easy for me to "own" the equipment I need to use to earn my "living". Which manifests as autonomy; I am fortunate in that I can mostly pick what I want to work on and earn a "living".

I look to Code Pilot, cloud services, etc as a distributed, subconscious effort to remove my ability to own the "means of production."

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basilmuhammad91 • Edited

From my perspective, best part of being a software developer is that, you never get bored, you never give up and you never stop learning in order to survive in the Industry. Coding to me is like a playing games.

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Catherine Mohan

Helping people by fixing issues and creating new opportunities! I love it when someone comes back to me and tells me how much easier my app/automation/etc. has made their job.

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atulcodex profile image
🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

Exactly, That feeling is much beautiful than our imagination

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Savvas Stephanides

For me, the best part of being a software developer is the fact that you have genius pieces of machinery at your mercy which you can talk to and command in order to improve, enrich, and empower the lives of people around you. That is what I love the most about being into software development.

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dastasoft

The best thing is that you are offering really valuable solutions to problems that people have and you have the opportunity (time and budgets permitting) to decide how to solve it and offer not just a solution but something that solves the problem by offering more value, choice, convenience, etc.

Maybe not the best part, but a very cool part, I don't know how many other careers share this, but as a developer nowadays you can work almost everywhere from anywhere because of the combination of being able to work remotely and the high demand, so to be able to change your life on that level I think is noteworthy.

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Jonathan Boudreau

Uh free beer? In all seriousness, its probably that its a high demand job where employers will pay well enough with good benefits. Being part of something which is highly relevant in everyone's day to day (software in general) is also quite satisfying.

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Volodymyr Yepishev

For me it's the ability to create something. I.e. you can craft your own tools to use: browser extensions, programms, ad hoc scripts, etc. That's amazing! :)

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atulcodex profile image
🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

yes exactly

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Nikkhiel Seath

I get to read posts with cute dogs and learn from people more experienced than me.

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Murtuzaali Surti

Problem solving by googling!

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Souk Syp.

Solving problems

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Gabriel Guzman

Creating something from nothing.

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🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

To help humanity

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DylanC

That feeling when someone uses your software and both enjoy the experience and saves them time and energy, every time.

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pheroMona13

If you truly want it, you can work from everywhere in the world that you like. Of course unless you go and work for a (stupid) company that insists on you showing up there every day from 8 to 5.

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Michael_Maranan

I think it is seeing things work from start to its best current condition, where you witness how it grow and also learning from the mistakes.

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ra🧑‍💻

You can be lazy full time.

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Garrett / G66 / megabyteGhost

If I have an idea I have the ability (maybe not the time tho) to build it.

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Rafael Osipov

I love seeing how the results of my work change people's lives for the better. How they save energy, time, and help with difficult and boring tasks.

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Stewart Valladolid

what

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davideo profile image
davidecheta599

100%

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Mike Markowski

Software lets you do so much, so fast! There are so many libraries, IDEs, and so on. If you've ever done hardware development, it's a very different timescale.

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🚩 Atul Prajapati 🇮🇳

yes it is