Programmers have the benefit of being able to torture and kill our patients at scale (unit and integration testing), doctors less so. The diagnostic skills one hits in any given doctor may be relatively shallow, plus tired, overworked, or annoyed by a patients self expression… the results I’ve seen are commonly abysmal and care providers are never shocked by poor and misdiagnosis from other practitioners.

I have some statistically very common conditions and a family medical history with explicit confirmation of inheritable genetic conditions. Yet, if I explain my problems A to Z I’m a Zebra whose female hysteria has overwhelmed his basic reasoning and relationship to reality. Explained Z to A, well I can’t get past Z because, holy crap is this an obvious Horse and there’s really only one cause of Horse-itis and if your mom was a Horse then you’re Horse enough for Chronic Horse-itis.

They don’t have time to listen, their ears aren’t all that great, and the mind behind them isn’t necessarily used to complex diagnostics with misleading superficial characteristics. Fire that through a 20 min appointment, 10 of which is typing, maybe in a second language or while in pain, 6 plus month referral cycles and… presto: “it took a decade to identify the cause of the hoof prints” is how you spent your 30s and early 40s.