You think music theory is more demanding than CS? I've dedicated decades and probably 75% of my youth to mastering this instrument called a computing device. It has numerous layers, each completely different and each significant enough to build a standalone career out of (OS, networking, etc). I feel insulted if you think playing and mastering a piano is the same thing.

Extreme specialists are found everywhere. Mastering skateboarding at world level will eat your life too, but it's not "harder" than programming. At least, for any commonsensical interpretation of "harder".

All the rest, we do too. Except I don't record videos and I'm sure it is not childishly easy, but it will not eat my life.

I'm literally speechless. What an arrogant and egotistical comment. This is why us tech workers have a such a bad rep as culturally ignorant/bubbled community. Do a bit of research into jazz theory and counterpoint theory before you make this kind of blatant over generalization.

This exact comment could be made by a jazz soloist with a few words changed and be just as valid. I think you're underestimating how deep other fields, including artistic fields, are. Anything as competitive as an artistic field will always result in amounts of mastery needed at the top level that are barely noticeable to outside observers.

> This exact comment could be made by a jazz soloist with a few words changed and be just as valid.

It's not that uncommon for professional programmers to be pro-level musical soloists on the side, or for retired programmers to play top-level music. The reverse is far less common. I do think that says something.

> Anything as competitive as an artistic field will always result in amounts of mastery needed at the top level that are barely noticeable to outside observers.

Sure. Top-level artistic fields are well into the diminishing returns level, whereas programming is still at the level where even a lot of professional programmers are not just bad, but obviously bad in a way that even non-programmers can understand.

Even in the easiest fields, you can always find something to compete on (e.g. the existence of serious competitive rubik's cube doesn't mean solving a rubik's cube is hard). A difficult field is one where the difference between the top and the middle is obvious to an outsider.

>> You think music theory is more demanding than CS?

Of course it is.

Can‘t you see that your statement is just as silly or even more?

Have you actually looked into CS deeply? Obviously not. (I‘m not saying this cannot also be true for music, which I don‘t know.)

try to study both and then come back :)

I couldn‘t, but I could also not study many other things and not because of what you call difficulty. Quite simply different people are good at some things and less good at others.

Maybe you are better at CS than music and therefore perceive it as easy and the other one as hard.

ok man

I am a classical clarinet player, a Physicist and a programmer. Music theory is ridicously easy in confront to everything STEM I've studied. It isn't even a paragon: the counterintuitiveness of Physics, the abstractions, the rigor of thinking needed was really stressfull to my mind while music theory was... underwhelming to say the least.

have done (doing?) both, music theory is several times harder at least

Again, it depends on the level. Maybe you took trivial CS courses. Many parts of CS are indistinguishable from mathematics, is that so easy as well? What about the various open problems that have remained unsolved for decades now in theoretical CS? You think these are simpler than music? Really?

Come on, at which level did you study them? I studied both at University level and was a classical clarinet player and anything STEM was much more difficult than anything music theory.

This comment is so arrogant I have to laugh. This kind of attitude is exactly why people outside of our industry don't think highly of Silicon Valley.

I think today he/she learned an important lesson for his/her career: there are things more difficult than the epitome, the apogee, the quintessence of professions, called computer science.

This is why I come to HN! Thank you!

Speaking as one of the outsiders that the other commenters warned you made SV/programmers look bad... yeah, you do look bad.

Thanks for the copypasta

It isn't harder to be an artist or pianist, it's just that the cutoff of employability for these professions is much higher. It's like saying playing baseball is harder than programming because only a few thousand people are good enough to play baseball for a living.