alt Hacker NewsCreating a program is more like the interior designer choosing paints or the engineer designing a bridge in some CAD software. The actual painting/building has been automated for ages and they are the compiler/computer combo.
People who are new to the scene may find "browsing catalog"/"configuring models" tedious, but that's how you develop the intuition of what works and what not. After a while, you can shortcut most of the tediousness with those heuristics. You know enough blocks that it's just choosing the right one to fit the solution and you do not have to research them and understand them at the same time (where most of the beginners' time is dedicated to).
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And then endless tweaks for CSS when the home owner decides they don't like the color of their molding...
There is programming that is like that - it is not all programming, and I strongly suspect not the the majority by dollars invested into developers - even it is less of an interior designer choosing paints and more of an entire designer designing an entire interior.
Once you get away from the very trivial side of programming, yes you are standing on the shoulders of giants, but the design decisions are in fact truly novel un-forced choices. Ask two people to make a "note taking app for university students" and you'll get two very differently shaped apps.