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I can spend a 100 hours or more working on some code, and it takes less than 2 minutes to demo it to the customer. 
I suppose many things are like that. Imagine the thousands and thousands of hours put into the design, manufacturing, testing, and assembly of a rocket. What does the customer see? Ooh, that was a cool launch, and look, 5 minutes later the booster landed on a barge at sea, with big rolling waves no less!
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Yeah, most things in life are like that. Sprinters train for years and their "work" is done in 10 seconds.
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Everything is like that!
I just had Amazon deliver a new mini-food processor (A Kenwood CH180, replacing ... another CH180 that has plastic fatigue after 20+ years) and ... it's at least five plastic mouldings (that's five injection moulding tool pairs and each of them is a load of work to make, I've paid for a few in my time) plus assembly, design, prototyping, label design and print, box design and print, the purchasing and logistics of all of those and the components, marketing, shop placement, credit card processing, packing, shipping, ... a whole load of things went into getting a small box to me.
And I unpacked it, plugged in in the kitchen and pushed the button to make sure it worked. Two minutes.
Now I might not touch it for a week, I dunno when I'll need it. 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Why didn't you print them yourself rather than buying them?
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My 3D CAD skills are nowhere near that level!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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And 2 seconds for the demo to end in a BSoD.
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It's even worse when you spend hours coding something, and everything works when you test it, and then the customer breaks it in 5 seconds flat because he does something stupid that he's not supposed to do...
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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I had something that worked flawlessly for me, and pass my tests for two weeks before taking it to COMDEX where it promptly crashed in front of fortunately just one person at the time. Had to take it back to the hotel room and try to hotfix it. I put a bandaid on it that also disabled a feature to get it working.
The fault was mine. Early days of professional programming for me, and I tried to do too much with not enough time.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Worst perhaps is what I've been saying throughout my entire career, and that is we, as developers, "aren't building cathedrals". What I mean by this is that most of us can spend years on some software product, and no matter how great it might be, software rarely has a shelf life of more than a few years. After a decade or two, it's like the software never existed. Cathedrals, on the other hand, are still standing after hundreds of years. Mind you, nobody might know the names of those who worked on it, but the monument still stands after centuries.
I've never been in it to "leave my mark", and I'm okay with that. But anyone in this industry who wants to make the history books will be severely disappointed.
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It depends what you're working on. Probably the most useful things I did was to develop two application frameworks. One of them is still executing code over 20 years later, and the other (as far as I know) is still executing code over 35 years later. Applications are still being developed on the first one, but I'd be surprised if that was still the case with the second one.
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I'd have said it depends on how badly you screw up, and how publicly as well. In my case, no history books, because nothing I do working for a market research company is going to have any lasting effect on anyone or anything, and I like it that way.
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I suppose there's also the aspect of visibility. Only those who develop against your app framework know anything about it. I'm betting this is entirely meaningless to the end users.
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It's certainly invisible to end users.
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Like a Tip of the Iceberg. We don't see the huge mass hiding below in the water.
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke
You should be happy you are such good wizard  On the other hand inside each of us there is a little cabotin who would die to reveal the secrets and get the applause.
Mircea
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The easier you make it look, the more you are taken for granted.
I'm aware of one who rose to V.P. because he was responsible for a COBOL mess called "the P&L": the Profit / Loss statement.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
modified 28-Jul-20 13:08pm.
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Marc Clifton wrote: ...and it takes less than 2 minutes to demo it to the customer.
Yes, but now you can spend the rest of your life organizing your CD collection! 
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David O'Neil wrote: Yes, but now you can spend the rest of your life organizing your CD collection!
I'd welcome that. Try organizing a collection of untagged MP3 files...
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If they are organized by directory, MP3Tag can take a lot of the work out of it. MP3Tag is an amazing tool for that job.
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I'm a long-time fan of MP3Tag. But there's only so much automation can solve.
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And the longevity of some quick-and-dirty code is surprising as well.
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We harmonise on the cusp of laughter without greeting. (11)
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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