Javanian: I don't want to see any ''i want to learn programming'' comment on this thread, there is a thread for that. Be warned!

@moderator , please let them be. Even the mighty Jesus said 'let the little children come unto me . . . . '

The reality is that few programming topics make the front page and for those who have a fascination for programming but don't know how to, that's always the first question on their lips.
I know you must have heard this a million times but you should always expect it when a prog topic makes the first page.

There are kindlier ways to gently steer them to the right place rather than hiding posts and threats.

You only end up chasing people away from a field that has a dreadful reputation already and continue to perpetuate the impression that programmers are broody antisocials

@poster,
My opinion is this , there is no such thing has a difficult (or intractable) programmatic problem or difficult software.

What we have are usually problems that are large and complex, hence might not be easily solved by a one man team.

Once you know the requirement of a given task, and can break the problem down into simpler sub task and importantly, you are well versed in the language of choice (and also sure the language or platform in question is optimized for tackling such a problem).
You are good to go.

For instance, I might not be able to write an accounting/audit software right now, not because it is difficult but because I do not have the requisite knowledge of accounting processes. What I am saying is that as long as you can break a problem down into algorithms, then you're good to go.

We do not have some kind of software being developed in Nigeria today not because of intelligence but rather because some projects require a long time, large number of people and willing investors. Not just smash and grab. I can't attribute that to being difficult really.


and no 2 on your list is definitely not true.
We forget that, the biggest innovation in IT today are so not because of complexity but rather due to concept. There are some concepts that are not necessarily difficult to implement but are game changers.
PHP took one year to develop and deploy in its first stage and it was done by one (or two) individuals. The latest craze now - node. apparently didn't take that much time from initialization to release.
The selling point for these product was more of the fact that the concept was ground breaking.

I have a dream to work on PHP++ compiler and based on the concept, it shouldn't take more than a year. Its just that right now I do not have enough savings (or sponsorship) to undertake a project that might not fetch me a dime within a year or two.

Moderator, why did you hide my post? I didn't break any rule.

pak:

@moderator , please let them be. Even the mighty Jesus said 'let the little children come unto me . . . . '

The reality is that few programming topics make the front page and for those who have a fascination for programming but don't know how to, that's always the first question on their lips.
I know you must have heard this a million times but you should always expect it when a prog topic makes the first page.

There are more kindlier ways to gently steer them to the right place rather than hiding posts and threats.

You only end up chasing people away from a field that has a dreadful reputation already and continue to perpetuate the impression that programmers are broody antisocials

God bless you.

Suprised why games didn't make the list.... Game development involves a great deal of hardcore programming, logic with a high degree of artificial intelligence, modelling,2D/3D graphics and animations. Implementing these concepts in an application to capture the original idea of the game could be really frustrating and challenging....

crystal9t: Suprised why games didn't make the list.... Game development involves a great deal of hardcore programming, logic with a high degree of artificial intelligence, modelling,2D/3D graphics and animations. Implementing these concepts in an application to capture the original idea of the game could be really frustrating and challenging....

Well said , AI on its own is one crazy field.

Just passing. We Nigerians can come together & build something that we will all be proud of. I know that financial backing may not be there but if we rally round I believe there's nothing we can't achieve.

Judging by my experience, Writing a DRIVER for a device to work on Linux OS was the hardest code i ever wrote.

games do make it on the list under Artificial Intelligence.
.
PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT LISTING THESE IN ORDER OF DIFFICULTY. ...in continuation....

4. CAD Systems, Modelling and Discrete Simulation systems.
... These Systems are highly dependent on Mathematics... These Software usually have thousands of equation solvers that coexist together... The big players in this regard are AutoDesk and Mathworks inc.
The codebase keeps on increasing yearly with thousands of derivatives from the works of Mathematic scholars.
And of cause, it is widely believed their core is written in C... (Expensive to write, but you get to use virtually true machine power)


5. Highly scalable data/service servers and distributed node Servers:
...there isnt anything perfectly scalable.(compared to our imaginations)... But there are software scalable enough to manage efficiently, a few thousand bytes of memory to several trillions of bytes of memory... with little overheads.. The scalability factor is pretty large. These software has simple models to a Data-Structures and Algorithm specialist or veteran... but in real life, the design decision of implementing those structures such that its able to scale over different nodes is quite complex.
Software that serves 0n demand also falls here... Its scaling to requirements... Thus, they are designed with grids and distributed computing in mind... Ranging from a single computer of 2 processor cores to server farms of several hundreds/thousands of processor cores... These software includes Relational Database servers, webservers, etc... The big players here are ORACLE(leading in this regard), MICROSOFT and APACHE Software Foundation...
...and the market shareholders are mostly online web/data hosting companies, multinational Companies and governments.
....

...but you know what??... Cloud computing extensively uses these systems coupled with virtualization, fault tolorance, and many advanced but easily comprehenadable implementations... And its fast rising today... Let Nigeria join!!
On a side note...
PHCN alone is potential enough to frustrate any mid-size Nigerian company attempting this... ..lol. Still, ....I love Nigeria!

This post has been hidden.

I've been trying to write an ordinary examination timetabling program for months now. . . I must be the dumbest programmer ever on NL!

RuuDie: I've been trying to write an ordinary examination timetabling program for months now. . . I must be the dumbest programmer ever on NL!

nope, you aren't... The only one criterion I know is copying, pasting and/or 'regex' renaming variables of people's source codes into your project.

pak: @poster,
My opinion is this , there is no such thing has a difficult (or intractable) programmatic problem or difficult software.

What we have are usually problems that are large and complex, hence might not be easily solved by a one man team.

Once you know the requirement of a given task, and can break the problem down into simpler sub task and importantly, you are well versed in the language of choice (and also sure the language or platform in question is optimized for tackling such a problem).
You are good to go.

For instance, I might not be able to write an accounting/audit software right now, not because it is difficult but because I do not have the requisite knowledge of accounting processes. What I am saying is that as long as you can break a problem down into algorithms, then you're good to go.

We do not have some kind of software being developed in Nigeria today not because of intelligence but rather because some projects require a long time, large number of people and willing investors. Not just smash and grab. I can't attribute that to being difficult really.


and no 2 on your list is definitely not true.
We forget that, the biggest innovation in IT today are so not because of complexity but rather due to concept. There are some concepts that are not necessarily difficult to implement but are game changers.
PHP took one year to develop and deploy in its first stage and it was done by one (or two) individuals. The latest craze now - node. apparently didn't take that much time from initialization to release.
The selling point for these product was more of the fact that the concept was ground breaking.

I have a dream to work on PHP++ compiler and based on the concept, it shouldn't take more than a year. Its just that right now I do not have enough savings (or sponsorship) to undertake a project that might not fetch me a dime within a year or two.

yeah you may be right... And what I ment by difficult as "needing much effort to accomplish, deal with or understand."
PHP? Yeah, but can you compare the robustness of the current PHP with the first version?... I am writing this piece in relation to current trends.
Facebook is using HipHop and has been improving on it and are still working on it to bring it up to par with its expectations.
Thats why I mentioned writing from ground up to what can be accepted by most stakeholders in the computing industry...

"Software is a real machine that evolves"

RuuDie: I've been trying to write an ordinary examination timetabling program for months now. . . I must be the dumbest programmer ever on NL!

don't be too harsh on yourself, what language are you working with?

I developed a software for a Civil Engineering Student in my Sch(Yabatech).written in VB6.its purely calculations with over hundreds of Conditions...I would love to move on to something more challenging though..Programming is quite beautiful..when I write a program that works,I feel like I just brought a human to life.

it is true dat writing an OS can be very hard. Buh i want to know how people make money from their software. tanx .

some software are inherently complex but this shdnt b stereotyped. point is byond a certain limit a program may bcome (extremely/very/quite) complex to code. E.g a texteditor may b not so hard but stuffs like vim,emacs,notepad++ ,jedit could require originality and smarts.

Please what is the average cost of developing an E-learning portal?

for me I believe a graphics engine comes after the operating system.

webdezzi:

all those are not difficult, you just need a good ground in mathematics
C/C++, java, python etc can all be used, but rendering which involves serious mathematical calculations will be best written in C
also to remind you, Maya has python support, just like you can write in MEL to automate tasks, same can be done with python right inside maya.

seriously, when i first open this thread, I was expecting Autodesk Maya to top the list, that piece of software kickass

I don't think you know what you're talking about. Graphics programs are VERY difficult.
We're talking OpenGL, (which happens to be one of the most difficult languages to grasp), DirectX, hardware shaders, extremely complex low level rendering algorithms and hundreds of shading algorithms accumulated over the years..

OK, make I go sleep