the majority of my programming projects that are most "worth doing" actually have pretty substantial amounts of tedium and burn-out inducing grinds associated with them
it's a bit counter-intuitive, but i've found that this is often the case for problems that need solving. the reason some "simple" problems are still unsolved is because the problem's simplicity hides an arduous journey.
Which seemingly simple problem is actually the most knarly one you've come across?
@mfashby input validation with perl cgi scripts in the late 90s due to my own lack of experience, the lack of tooling in that area at the time, and the fact that cgi scripts were pretty much a mess
That does sound painful. Maybe it was a formative experience but it doesn't sound fun
What's your preferred neighborhood of problems to work on?
@seylerius i would say that it's web development
on one hand, you almost never need to flex and do the kind of stuff that counts as Real Programming to certain computer science elitists
on the other hand, having a deep understanding of things like big O notation, data structures, memory usage, and performance can be fused rewardingly with the art and science of crafting a pleasant user experience.
i still feel like web development is where you can impact a lot of lives in positive ways
@scarly why solve problems when we can pitch more frameworks for solving problems?