Programmers are the most optimistic people in the world!

We, programmers - the most optimistic people, of all whom I have just met. Ask any of us how long it will take to do this or that thing - and you will get a super-optimistic answer, very far from reality. This is not because we specifically try to misinform and confuse you, no. And not because we are stupid. We just look at everything with optimism.

Here is a project, here are our knowledge and capabilities, here are your specifications, here is the Unknown Mysterious Things ... The last one, of course, is the biggest problem. It is impossible to foresee everything in advance and there are great chances to meet such immense devils in a quiet swamp that the entire Royal Rat will fight them for a very long time. But you always want to believe that they will not. And here we give an estimate of the time of “1 hour”, we start working, there is one oddity, the second, a bug in another component - and now the task has gone all day, but it is not finished yet.

There is, by the way, another profession, whose people also give estimates in conditions of uncertainty. And also often wrong. This is a doctor. Let me tell you two stories about time estimates.

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Medical history

Last Friday I hurt my shoulder. I skated on a skateboard, stumbled - well, then the classic “fell, woke up, closed fracture”. As a result, I completely lost the opportunity to use my right hand. I had to learn to temporarily eat and write with my left. At the hospital, they gave me an x-ray, the doctor said that everything is fine, the bones grow together normally, but for the next 3 weeks I will not be able to use my right hand and will experience decent pain. “Just take painkillers if it's really bad,” that's what he said.

Today, after only 6 days, I already feel much better. I would rate the progress of recovery by about 90%. This morning I made 60 of my usual 150 push-ups, jumped on a rope and even raised my four-kilogram skate with my right hand. I think so a day or two and I completely forget about my injury. It turns out that the doctor gave an assessment of the progress of my recovery with a threefold error. On what, damn it, I'm glad that he was wrong!

Programming history

I am working on a segmentation algorithm for web pages. The idea is to take an arbitrary website and highlight a “header”, “basement”, banners, columns, etc. This is not such an easy task as it seems at first glance. The algorithm began to work this week, it remains to bring to mind a couple of small things. I was asked how long it would take and I replied, “I'll do it by Friday!”. Where did I get this assessment? Well, I thought that there is nothing difficult in this task. I know how to do it. And the work there - pah, 2 hours from the force. But I am currently writing in a programming language that I hate (well, that’s what happened in this part of the project), according to a paradigm that I don’t like at all, but was imposed by the boss from above and also use one large library that I have just met a week ago. So, perhaps, I will stretch the initial "2 hours" to "until Friday." Let it be. I definitely have time! Yes, every rake is a bit too much, but I’m working as a programmer for ages! I can handle.

I failed.

At first, it turned out that I didn’t completely understand the task - I had to change a lot. Then the library used the trick, she did some things not as I thought. Plus, at the last moment I had to change the synchronous interface to asynchronous. And besides ...

Familiar, eh?

Programmers are very optimistic

Whenever you talk to a programmer, remember - this is such an optimistic being that you never dreamed of. And even if you see in front of you a programmer with three dozen years of experience behind him, gray hair in his temples and no smile on his face - do not be tempted to take him for a realist, he is just as optimistic as everyone.

All programmers are constantly:

• Dive headlong into the pool of new incomprehensible projects with constantly changing specifications
• They take new unknown tools, use them for unknown purposes and ... get the desired result
• Fall into a new universe with each new project
• Constantly moving to new languages, platforms, databases, devices, etc.

Anyone who is not an avowed optimist simply would not have survived in the programming profession .

So yes, we are optimists, we look at everything with head held high and with interest. We will always be like that. How many other professions can boast the same?