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Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

mikehadlow.blogspot.com

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Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#101

Post by panglott »

paulcole wrote: post #27

There's a big gulf between knowing how to code and working as a professional software developer. I'm a writer for a marketing agency, but I write Google App Scripts, JavaScript, and PHP on a regular basis to automate tasks, try out ideas I have, etc. There's no way I could work as a professional software developer, but I know how to code enough to help make my professional/personal life easier and more fun. Isn't the…

Excatly. There's a huge difference between "everybody needs to learn to become a professional software developer" and "everyone needs a higher level of software literacy, including basic coding skills"

Lots and lots of office jobs involve stuff like updating content on a Django app or shoestringing together Excel VBA and Access stuff. There's all kinds of tasks where scripts and low-level automation would be useful.

Now the tools for this tend to be awful and workers tend to be locked out of trying it, but that's another story.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#102

Post by bencollier49 »

jdiez17 wrote: post #43

This article reflects my experience at University very well. I'm a self taught programmer that ended up pursuing a CompSci degree. I'm in the last semester of my BSc, and in hindsight I should have studied something else, like Physics or Electrical Engineering. The standards are ridiculously low. Most of my coursemates (final year CS students) are literally unable to write software. They can write a single-file cpp f…

This matches my experience. I was trying to hire a junior programmer, and got someone in for interview who ostensibly had a first-class CS degree from a Russell Group university, yet could not explain to me what Functional Programming involved. He didn't even recognise the term.

(Incidentally, the university refused to corroborate his degree, on the grounds that it would be a breach of the Data Protection Act, which boggled my mind).

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#103

Post by thenipper »

paulcole wrote: post #27

There's a big gulf between knowing how to code and working as a professional software developer. I'm a writer for a marketing agency, but I write Google App Scripts, JavaScript, and PHP on a regular basis to automate tasks, try out ideas I have, etc. There's no way I could work as a professional software developer, but I know how to code enough to help make my professional/personal life easier and more fun. Isn't the…

"Isn't there something to be said for that? Not every skill needs to lead directly to a job. Can't it just be another skill to have when you need it?"

Amen. I'm constantly writing little Ruby scripts to do some automated task, usually fixing CSVs or extracting data to load it in a database to compensate for crappy reporting in a tool I use. I suppose that this or my recreational Clojure programming is something I could turn into a job, but I prefer to have it be a tool that allows me to do my job better. Or to run better D&D campaigns...

There definitely is a divide between like software engineer, and say person who uses programming to make their job a bit more efficient. It seems as though everyone is representing it as a binary choice when as paulcole said it's more of a gradient.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#104

Post by bradleyjg »

Alex3917 wrote: post #33
gabemart wrote: post #13

I feel like the discussion around this post will suffer from a lack of specificity over what a 'software developer' is. Someone who works primarily on small javascript web applications has a really different job from someone who works on a large application built on a LAMP stack, or someone who writes complex iOS applications, or someone designs self-driving car software for Google, or someone who works on embedded s…

> Each of these jobs probably have a particular set of paths that lead to them. I think the commonality is that at the minimum you need to be able to read English at a proficient level, which weeds out the vast majority of American adults.

That's not true. The vast majority of adult Americans can read at an adequate level. Further, given time and incentive, most can write well enough to be understood, if not exactly to high grammatical standards. These facts are triumphs of the modern educational system.

However large numbers of adult Americans when faced with:

  3x - 7/3 = 4
could not solve exactly for x, no matter the time and incentives. It is hard to imagine how such a person would be able to learn to code, at least as long as programming languages look anything at all like those of today.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#105

Post by learc83 »

okaramian wrote: post #60
hashkb wrote: post #3

Also, shoveling bootcampers into the industry is bad for real engineers and the quality of their software. Management everywhere is lowering the bar so they can hit their hiring goals and pretending the consequences are natural.

I feel like this should be true, but in my experience it hasn't been. We've hired interns who become full-time at some point, both CS grads and bootcampers. As a note, the bootcampers we've hired have been people with a little bit of programming experience (not a ton, generally they did it as part of a previous job) that wanted to switch careers. The ones we've hired have been around 24/25, with about a year of exper…

>The CS interns were college kids, so it could just be a function of maturity.

I'd wager that almost every difference you've noticed is down to maturity.

The average 25 year old who's been working for several years is a light years ahead of the average 20 year old college kid when it comes to attitude.

If you were hiring 25 year old CS grads, they'd likely have the same work ethic, and an understanding of the formal methods underpinning their experience.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#106

Post by learc83 »

sbov wrote: post #45
hashkb wrote: post #3

Also, shoveling bootcampers into the industry is bad for real engineers and the quality of their software. Management everywhere is lowering the bar so they can hit their hiring goals and pretending the consequences are natural.

Is it bad? Should we have "real" engineers working on software that a bootcamper could do? It seems like a waste of resources. Some problems only need a solution that your nephew can hack together in a week. That said, the problem is that many people looking to get software built can't properly identify what should actually be engineered. In the physical world it's a bit more obvious.

>Some problems only need a solution that your nephew can hack together in a week.

There's also huge subset of problems that look like something your nephew can hack together, until he does and there's a huge security flaw that leaks all your customer data.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#107

Post by lloyd-christmas »

jdiez17 wrote: post #43

This article reflects my experience at University very well. I'm a self taught programmer that ended up pursuing a CompSci degree. I'm in the last semester of my BSc, and in hindsight I should have studied something else, like Physics or Electrical Engineering. The standards are ridiculously low. Most of my coursemates (final year CS students) are literally unable to write software. They can write a single-file cpp f…

> The vast majority of what I know about software engineering didn't come from my time at University

I think this describes almost all undergraduate degrees. The only ones I can think of that go against this are the 5 year engineering programs, and I liken those more towards a masters than undergrad.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#108

Post by whatever_dude »

mgirdley wrote: post #8

I loathe these type articles. They're complex arguments to justify the attitude that "only we chosen few (men) with serious tech degrees are gifted enough to do important work in code." Tech is a big, prosperous industry and will be bigger if we act welcoming rather than creating complex arguments to protect our turf. Disclaimer: Am a white male with a CS degree who runs a coding bootcamp.

From the article:

> Let’s stop pretending that there are artificial barriers to entry and accept that the main barrier to anyone taking it up is their natural aptitude for it. Instead let’s work on improving the social status of the software industry – I think this is in any case happening slowly – and also work on encouraging talented young people to consider it as a viable alternative to some of the other top professions.

I'd say he's arguing about getting more of the right type of people into the field, rather than pretending it's something anyone can do, and getting the wrong type of people into it.

If we (as in software developers) were trying to "protect our turf", all we had to do was to continue with what we're doing. The new candidates will be terrible, the potential good candidates will be somewhere else, and we'll be "safe" atop the knowledge tower we built.

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#109

Post by Alex3917 »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #91
Alex3917 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each of these jobs probably have a particular set of paths that lead to them. I think the commonality is that at the minimum you need to be able to read English at a proficient level, which weeds out the vast majority of American adults.

While I hate to be THAT cynical... my father is a doctor, and they've had issues with patients not understanding their paperwork. They had done studies to figure out the median reading level of their patients. It turned out to be an 8th grade level, so they adapted their paperwork. The patients still didn't understand it. It turned out that they were capable of reading at an 8th grade level, but their reading COMPREH…

"More than 300 studies indicate that health-related materials far exceed the average reading ability of U.S. adults."

"90 million adults with limited health literacy cannot fully benefit from much that the health and health-care system have to offer."

"A two-year-old is diagnosed with an inner ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Her mother understands that her daughter should take the prescribed medication twice a day. After carefully studying the label on the bottle and deciding that it doesn't tell how to take the medicine, she fills a teaspoon and pours the antibiotic into her daughter's painful ear."

http://hospitals.unm.edu/health_literacy/pdfs/HealthLiteracy...

Re: Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think

#110

Post by learc83 »

jdiez17 wrote: post #43

This article reflects my experience at University very well. I'm a self taught programmer that ended up pursuing a CompSci degree. I'm in the last semester of my BSc, and in hindsight I should have studied something else, like Physics or Electrical Engineering. The standards are ridiculously low. Most of my coursemates (final year CS students) are literally unable to write software. They can write a single-file cpp f…

I went to back to University after working after working as a professional programmer for about 5 years.

What I learned in Automata, Discrete Math, Algorithms, and the other more theoretical classes has been worth it's weight in gold.

The things I learned in "Software Engineering" on the other hand, not so much.

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