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Learning to program is getting harder

allendowney.blogspot.com

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Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#61

Post by watwut »

TimJYoung wrote: post #6

It's getting harder because it's become fashionable to shun IDEs that make most of these issues obsolete, and have done so since at least the 90's. It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process. This idea that using an IDE will discourage someone from finding out the more detailed workings of the language, compiler, etc. is no…

Jesus christ, this. I was doing free online course recently and guess what the forum was full of: self proclaimed geniuses that discouraged beginners from using IDE "notepad is enough". In java mind you, just about the worst language to write in notepad.

Of course they struggled with homework.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#62

Post by AlexCoventry »

socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

I too am obsessed with computers, and will push through "helpdesk" type issues to get my work done. However, I don't consider that to be a remarkable skill. Such issues can almost always be resolved with a bit of googling. Perhaps I'm too close to see the foundational knowledge I'm depending on, though.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#63

Post by yesenadam »

bitwize wrote: post #17
sien wrote: post #3

This is presenting a wildly rosy view of the past. In Commodore 64 days you got some book that was all you had. You couldn't email the author of the book or look online. If you got through the huge filter of the initial steps being much harder than today then you were doing well and would go on. However, the endless set ups and downloading every library that is used is going to make maintenance of programs in 5, 10 o…

Not just some book, usually lots of books, from the fundamentals of BASIC to technical references with complete schematics for the entire machine. I had a Commodore VIC-20 and it certainly came with all these. And even then, experts and resources were available online, for suitably primitive values of "online". Think CompuServe. Another thing we had back then but less so today was magazines, full of programming and t…

Arghh, I learnt Z80 assembler and Turbo Pascal in the mid 80s without ever seeing any books about either. Not sure how, picked up bits and pieces from computer magazines in libraries.

A few years ago in a 2nd hand bookstore I finally laid eyes on Programming the Z80, which I'd heard about but never seen, and I was like "OMG, I would've given a leg to have had that in 1985!"

Life with LibGen (and StackExchange) is so vastly different to my childhood isolation from the world's knowledge. I'm constantly profoundly grateful. But wish I'd had that access back then! Although I can't imagine it.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#64

Post by gaius »

The question of “where to begin” is certainly a lot harder now. Learning to program the way my generation did, the programming itself was obviously harder - assembly vs Python for example - but the path and the progression was laid out for you.

For me it was BBC Basic, then 6502, then 68k with DevPac on the ST... myself and a friend wrote our own driver for a modem we found in a skip and that is how we first got online... good times

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#65

Post by watwut »

gameswithgo wrote: post #41
TimJYoung wrote: post #6

It's getting harder because it's become fashionable to shun IDEs that make most of these issues obsolete, and have done so since at least the 90's. It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process. This idea that using an IDE will discourage someone from finding out the more detailed workings of the language, compiler, etc. is no…

> It's ridiculous to expect newcomers to a language and/or programming in general to slog through a 20 or 30-step environment setup process Modern IDEs often require an hour long install, and then you turn them on and are faced with 10,000 buttons and 50 windows, they aren't simple either. I have had good success with making beginners people sit through a 30 minute dev environment set up process, in video form. No co…

VS Code is modern ide. And I would really like to know which IDE takes an hour long install. Because I tried multiple on windows and they all required download, double click and that was it.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#66

Post by gt_ »

blackbagboys wrote: post #31
socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

I agree with your observation, but I don't agree with your diagnosis of the cause. I think it's mostly down to the increasing abstraction and ease of using software. When I was a kid, I wouldn't have described "computing" as a hobby, but just getting certain games to install and run on my parent's cheap Gateway PC would require a lot of fiddling around. My younger siblings have no more or less interest in computing t…

I agree. My first computer had Windows 3.1, then soon upgraded to Windows 95, and I was probably worse off because of it. I made Angelfire sites with HTML for a summer but it didn’t hold my interest. I still don’t care for making HTML/CSS websites, but eventually learned I love programming. I firmly believe that if I were required to use command line simply to interact with my computer at that early stage, I would have pursued more programming.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#68

Post by rhizome »

socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

There's lots of money in computers, which has increased the proportion of graduates who know only how to add an IDE to the factory install of their computer. I saw this a lot back in my desktop support days.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#69

Post by Clubber »

leggomylibro wrote: post #8
socialist_coder wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, what I've seen is that older programmers, in addition to being programmers, also have the skills of a computer helpdesk technician. They can debug Windows problems, hardware problems, know how to mess with the BIOS, and have no problem installing or configuring any piece of software. This helps immensely when setting up your IDE or debugging weird problems with compiling. Younger programmers seem to comm…

But those skills have nothing to do with computer science as a field of study - wouldn't they be more useful to teach in general education like K-12? Like I remember in middle school, we had an elective option between woodshop and CAD. The 'CAD' class was really more about performing simple automation in programs like MS Word/Excel, but that sort of thing is still useful in just about any job these days - not just pr…

When I went to college, CS required 3 semesters of Calc and 3 semesters of Physics. It's almost as if CS was trying to fill in some hours. Calc and Physics are great and all, but very narrowly applicable. The only benefit is how it works your brain (and a good weed out course).

I would ditch that and concentrate only on computer related issues. Database would be a big one that is usually missing. Networking as well. Computer architecture (like building a computer and the Von-Neumann model) should also be included. Basic project management would be helpful too. That's 4-6 courses you could suppliant with Physics 1-3 and Calc 1-3.

It just seems silly to force CS kids to learn Physics and Calc when it is seldom used in the real world. I would much rather have a grad know the ins and outs of networking and how a computer actually works than Calc and Physics.

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