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I've been a programming since I was a kid in the 80s and for money since the late 90's and I'd struggle with what a computer scientist would consider simple problems.

It's a mismatch of domains.

Computer science !== Software engineering (though obviously there is overlap).

In practice I find that at least 50% of my job is getting requirements out of people's heads into a structured form I can explain to the high speed idiot.

The rest is working methodically, testing and documentation.

I work in the enterprise domain though so obviously YMMV if you are in machine learning, graphics programming etc.

Programming is a vast field with a huge number of sub-fields, find one you are good at and excel in that and let someone else worry about writing the compiler.




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