[rndmize]

I disagree. Farming has been the default job in human society for thousands of years - and still is, even today. There's nothing special about farmers, they aren't geniuses, the work is not that difficult - it requires effort, care and perseverance.

And this shouldn't be surprising. Farming is a very human activity, and can be done by pretty much any human. You don't need to be exceptional to do it. In fact it would be ridiculous if you did - imagine if only 1 in 50 people was brilliant enough to become a farmer - human civilization would never have gotten started.

Praising something like this feels silly to me, much as when people talk about "being a mother is the hardest job" or similar. It's not. Being a mother is a common human experience, and most women go through it.

This isn't to say such things shouldn't be celebrated. The idea of celebrations around harvest or motherhood is appealing to me, but there's nothing exceptional here, and there shouldn't be. Simple things, regular things, things everyone can do or goes through are worth celebrating, not just the exceptions, the geniuses, the stand-outs.

[baq]

Being a parent is definitely harder that being a software engineer if you want to do a good job. Same for being a farmer. It isn't the default job anymore for a reason.

You could argue more women nowadays don't want to be mothers because it's hard. Especially if that's the second job and unpaid, actually you have to pay lots of money to be a successful mother. So yeah, it's exceptional... that anyone wants to have children at all! Though that's quickly changing, too.

[rndmize]

> Being a parent is definitely harder that being a software engineer if you want to do a good job. Same for being a farmer. It isn't the default job anymore for a reason.

There's a difference between hard = effort, and hard = difficulty. Most people struggle to understand software engineering concepts. If you do understand them, then the effort required to succeed at the job is less than parenting/farming/etc; but there's a reason software engineers are in the top 20% of the economic ladder and picking vegetables on a farm is on the bottom.

And at last check, subsistence farming was still the default job worldwide. Perhaps things have changed in the last decade or two, but I have my doubts.

(I'd also take issue on the idea of parenting being difficult, vs. good parenting, vs. newer cultural expectations on parents/education/helicoptering, vs. kids being free to roam etc etc., but that's a whole huge discussion on its own - and I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that raising kids is not harder on either axis than having a job, but doing both at once is very difficult and forces an economic choice many women are making in favor of money.)

[randomdata]

As both a farmer and a software engineer, farming is way harder – and I don't mean in terms of effort. To your economic point, farming pays better too.

Sure, neither is hard if you want to do it at subsistence level. Hell, I started programming at like 5 years old. Software development is the easiest endeavour a human can partake in – so easy, it is easily picked up by young children who can barely read. Anyone can build software.

But I think it is far to say that building robust, reliable, maintainable, performant, and scalable software that satisfies a market need is a different story. And same goes for farming. If you want to farm at a level beyond subsistence, that is when it becomes hard.

[ok_dad]

I was kinda with you up until you started talking out of your ass about parenting, it is probably the hardest job I've ever done in my life, and I have had various physically and/or mentally challenging jobs.

The key to why parenting is such a hard job: it literally doesn't end for about two or more decades and you absolutely cannot quit or slack off on this gig, no matter what!

Just because something "always has been" doesn't mean it's easy.

[bigstrat2003]

Don't worry, he's talking out of his ass about farming as well.

[rndmize]

> The key to why parenting is such a hard job: it literally doesn't end for about two or more decades and you absolutely cannot quit or slack off on this gig, no matter what!

We might not like to admit it, but people can and do, all the time. There's an ideal as far as being a parent goes that we try to hold people to and enforce culturally - but that doesn't stop people from getting divorces or dumping their kids on their partner or parents while they go off and do their own thing. I know a number of people that more or less raised themselves - their parents provided necessities and that was about it.

There's also a larger discussion to be had on parenting and why it takes more time and effort than past generations; the difficulty of raising kids with two working parents; the move away from extended family groups and close neighbors that can help with kids; the increase in helicoptering/worrying and loss of independence; all of which contributes to making things more difficult.

> Just because something "always has been" doesn't mean it's easy.

I never said it was easy. What I said was it's not the hardest job, it's a common human experience, and it deserves celebrating even if it is an average, common thing.

[bigstrat2003]

> There's nothing special about farmers, they aren't geniuses, the work is not that difficult

This is absolutely laughable. The work is incredibly difficult. It literally destroys your body, every old farmer I've ever known has a heap of medical issues from having to do a lifetime of physical labor. It may not be intellectually difficult, but it's very difficult work.

[LeafItAlone]

They may be making a distinction between hard and difficult work.

Farming is hard work, as you noted. But most physically able people are capable of it.

Designing a rocket to put a man on the moon is difficult and a much smaller percentage is capable of that.