Programming is hard because problem descriptions given to programmers are often vague, incomplete, or inconsistent, making it challenging to understand exactly what the program needs to do. Additionally, programs tend to be too large to solve in one attempt, so programmers must figure out how to break problems down into well-chosen smaller pieces that are more manageable. The first step is determining what the task should do, then problems can be divided into sub-problems through decomposition.

1. W H Y
P R O G R A M M I N G
I S H A R D
W W W. T E F L E T O N P O S T. C O M

2. What makes it hard to write
programs?
When you're asked to write a program you're typically given a
poorly formed problem. And what I mean by that is you're
asked to write a program to solve some task, but the task
description is somewhat vague or it might be incomplete or
sometimes it's just even inconsistent.

3. Challenge!
The challenge is to find out what it is we want our program to
do!

4. SECOND PROBLEM
The second thing that makes programming hard is that
oftentimes the program is too big for us to solve in one
go.
How do we break down a problem in well-chosen smaller pieces.