<p>I’ve been programming since around my 12th birthday, and will be a CS major at Carnegie-Mellon this fall. I’ve done good-size projects in 8 languages, and paid work in 3.</p>
<p>Is programming repetitive? That depends, both on what you’re doing and in what language.</p>
<p>Imagine if there were no function calls. If you had a program that needed to solve quadratic equations, then, every time it needed to do so, you’d have to retype your code to do the necessary multiplications, square roots, etc. Function calls are a feature of almost all high-level languages that eliminate this potential repetitiveness.</p>
<p>However, there are quite a few other forms of repetitiveness which function calls alone cannot eliminate. Many languages have features which eliminate other broad classes of repetition. Unfortunately, quite a few popular languages such as C++, Java, and Visual Basic are quite lacking in the features that cut down on repetition (and are otherwise extremely verbose), and thus programmers using them often wind up like the OP’s friend. He’d be better off in a “very high level language” such as Ruby.</p>
<p>I recommend the following two short articles related to this: “Languages for the Masses and Languages for Smart People” by Michael Vanier ([LFM</a> and LFSP](<a href=“http://www.paulgraham.com/vanlfsp.html]LFM”>LFM and LFSP)), and “Can Your Programming Language Do This?” by Joel Spoelsky ([Can</a> Your Programming Language Do This? - Joel on Software](<a href=“http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html]Can”>Can Your Programming Language Do This? – Joel on Software)).</p>