---
title: "Why Programming Sucks and the fallacy of documentation in the context of code chaos"
date: 2016-07-12
description: "Listen here:       <img src="
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2016/07/12/why-programming-sucks/
---
# Why Programming Sucks and the fallacy of documentation in the context of code chaos
> Yesterday on Write the Docs, someone shared an article titled Programming Sucks, by Peter Welch. More than just a developer monologue, this article seems to hit on universal truths about programming, so much so that the article has been translated into 10 languages and even has a professionally-read audio version on iTunes (which I bought for $2).

**Listen here:**

[![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/apple_podcasts.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id-rather-be-writing-podcast/id277365275)

[![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/watchonyoutubeblack.png)](https://www.youtube.com/@idratherbewriting)

[![](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/spotify.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/4HeOZfPGMMfViOhVS40QBD)

You can read Peter Welch’s essay here: [Programming Sucks](http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks).

Welch starts by responding to criticisms of friends who work in manual labor fields and assume that a programmer’s life consists of sitting calmly at a desk, playing on a computer all day. Welch’s main argument is that programming can be just as hellish as the worst manual labor job, but the hell isn’t in the physical exhaustion as much as the mental insanity you have to endure.

More than anything, Welch’s tone is playful and full of images, turns of phrases, and the raw, blunt honesty that tends to define programming culture. Here’s a passage:

> Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There’s a team at a Google office that hasn’t slept in three days. Somewhere there’s a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she’s dead. And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

If you followed my previous blog post, [Thoughts on “Documentation Avoidance for Programmers”](/2016/07/09/programmer-explains-how-to-get-out-of-writing-documentation/), this article makes a nice juxtaposition. Why is programming such a hellscape to navigate? Well it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together: When no one documents anything, you end up with a lot of code that no one understands, and hell’s bells start ringing.