I think that non-tech people think that tech just goes. Like you pull it out of a box and turn it on and it just works. They have no idea how much jenk is in everything and how much jenk was eradicated before a user came went anywhere near.
I'm not in IT but used to work with a very old terminal based data storage and retrieval system.
If the original programmers had implemented a particular feature, it was very easy to enter a command and have it spit out the relevant info.
But as times changed, the product outgrew its original boundaries, and on a regular basis clients would ask for specific info that would require printing out decades worth of data before searching and editing it to get what the client wanted.
I can not tell you how many times I heard the phrase, "Can't you just push a button or something and get the information now??"
The thing that infuriated me the most was the idea that somehow we could do that, but didn't want to, as if there was some secret button under the desk that we could push for our favourite clients. Ugh.
That you can mix and match bugfixes like lego blocks an hour before release.
Based on some places I used to work, upper management seemed convinced that the "idea" stage was the hardest and most important part of any project, and that the easy part is planning, gathering requirements, building, testing, changing, and maintaining custom business applications for needlessly complex and ever changing requirements.
Just 2 days ago some friends thought that I could get any job from the huge pool of available jobs out there...
That I'm in any way smart or good at math
The files are IN the computer.
I was at a party explaining that we were finishing up a release trying to decide which bugs were critical to fix. The person that I was talking to was shocked that we would release software with known bugs.
When I explained that all software has bugs, known bugs, he didn't believe me.
As a non-dev (tinker for fun) observer- it sounds like your friends and family think you're working in IT, but their assumptions thereafter are fair. Is that accurate? That the misconception is software dev does not equal IT?
It goes a bit farther than that, even: IT work doesn't always equal IT work. Someone can be an expert in managing Linux-based load sharing servers and have no idea how to help a family member troubleshoot why their windows install is slow. Sure, they might have a better idea about how to start, but they'd be essentially starting from scratch for that specific problem rather than being able to apply any of their expertise to it.
Think of it like a programmer is a car builder, some IT people drive them for a living, others are mechanics. Someone who specializes in driving F1 cars might not have any idea why your car is rattling. The programmer might be able to figure it out if they built that car or the cause is something similar to what they see in the ones they have built. But if they build semis, odds are that isn't the case. But they might have a better idea than say a doctor.
I use the medecine analogy: you wouldn't ask your dentist or even your GP to operate on your brain; doesn't mean that they are not good at what they do though.
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