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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern Subscriber

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What is the best part of being a software developer?

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?

Latest comments (40)

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brentwritescode profile image
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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dclements9 profile image
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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rafo profile image
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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basilmuhammad91 profile image
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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stewartvallado2 profile image
Stewart Valladolid

what

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pheromona13 profile image
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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codeitmichael profile image
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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atulcodex profile image
๐Ÿšฉ Atul Prajapati ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ

yes it is

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razaanstha profile image
ra๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿ’ป

You can be lazy full time.

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snikhill profile image
Nikkhiel Seath

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