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Learning to program is getting harder

allendowney.blogspot.com

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Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#131

Post by shakna »

gowld wrote: post #119
switchbak wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly I think I'm the first to disagree. I find a modern IDE comes with so much implied mental baggage that new users can get completely overwhelmed. Sure, languages which require complex build environments almost demand one, but in simpler environments it can be a lot easier to reduce the cognitive load in a simplified environment. One can do a lot of programming and learning with just a simple editor (Nano?)…

? Ant and Maven work fine in my IDE

> This was a real problem back in the earlier Java days before Ant/Maven/etc came around. (Emphasis mine.)

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#132

Post by dan_mctree »

commandlinefan wrote: post #25
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…

> Shun IDEs Well, I don't think anybody is "shunning" IDEs just to be difficult; it's just really, really hard to describe something in the context of an IDE. For one thing, IDEs are (obviously) graphical, so you have to include a screenshot if you want to refer to something. Worse, IDEs change things around a lot (sometimes for no particular reason). Then of course, there are no standards in this area - in Java you…

Commandline instructions fail as often as IDE based instructions do. Changes in different versions, changes in the environment, different ways of trying to use the software, different ways projects were set up; all of these and many other reasons cause plenty of issues with commandline based instructions. It's never "just do everything on the command-line", it's "it just spewed out an essay of errors on step 2, and google is silent"

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#133

Post by pedrosorio »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #74
Retric wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of useful skills. Teaching people how to fix a flat tire would also be rather useful. Basic computer administration falls into that huge category of useful skills that are not worth teaching to a general population who have completely viable alternatives. Specialization is extremely valuable for society and having more competent doctors etc is worth doctors having a more narrow focus.

I disagree. Having a broader skill set means you can be more creative with problems. The separation between doctors and computer science is holding both fields back. Think of machine learning and big data, we are _just now_ starting to apply those ideas to medical problems, while those problems are fundamental to our existence as a species. Computers in hospitals are a chore and a drain on doctors. They should be emp…

> Specialization is a great thing but we need generalists to bridge the gap to help specialists empower each other.

That is the dream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_engineering

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#134

Post by sirmarksalot »

School-Cotton wrote: post #106
user5994461 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. Installing a C++ tool chain two decades ago is much harder than any current environment.

"Learning programming" doesn't mean "learning C++". A lot of people learned on some BASIC that came pre-installed on whatever device they bought.

And you're typing this comment from a full-featured Javascript IDE.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#135

Post by sanderjd »

rconti wrote: post #76
sametmax wrote: post #39

I disagree. Creating a program that meets todays' users expectations is what's harder. But learning programming by itself, is way easier. We have Python, Ruby, Javascript... We have the Web as a platform and as documentation. We have communities and cheap, fast computers. The hello world has never been easier to do. What's hard is to make a real time offline first SPA with a beautiful responsive design that uses the…

But the learning curve of getting an environment setup to do that is steeper.

Is it? When I was learning to program, I had a computer with Windows on it and no money. First, I needed to install Borland's C++ compiler / IDE, because that's what they used in the class and computer lab at my high school and I didn't know of anything else. But I had no money, so first I had to figure out how to pirate it. Then awhile later I heard that there was a free compiler on this operating system called Linux. So, after reading a bunch of stuff to figure out whether I wanted Slackware or Gentoo or SuSe or Fedora, I had to figure out how to download and install Linux. Then I had to figure out how to use GCC, but first I had to figure out how to edit text, which meant figuring out how to use Emacs. Then I finally had a usable (and legal) development environment.

Nowadays it seems like I could just get a Mac and download Atom to get to that same point.

Maybe there are other hard things to figure out now, but it just doesn't seem true that it was easier "back in the day", at least 15 years or so ago.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#136

Post by godot »

rconti wrote: post #76
sametmax wrote: post #39

I disagree. Creating a program that meets todays' users expectations is what's harder. But learning programming by itself, is way easier. We have Python, Ruby, Javascript... We have the Web as a platform and as documentation. We have communities and cheap, fast computers. The hello world has never been easier to do. What's hard is to make a real time offline first SPA with a beautiful responsive design that uses the…

But the learning curve of getting an environment setup to do that is steeper.

I think you are agreeing with sametmax's point actually.

It's not "the learning curve of getting an environment setup" generally, it's more that the specific environment you're thinking about, which is part of your presumption in this statement, is harder.

It is in fact extremely easy to get an environment setup if you're talking about basic Javascript and the browser -- there is no change in this from 20 years ago. You open up Notepad, type some HTML in, include a script tag and some alert("Hello world"); code in there, then double click the html file to open it on the browser. You do the same thing whether you're on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It will just work; there is nothing to install.

The harder stuff is setting up a python backend to start your first web application, or creating that SPA with responsive design like sametmax said -- that stuff is the "expectation" now in modern day applications. Because the expectation is set so high, setting up the envs to make those things is harder.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#137

Post by deckard1 »

user5994461 wrote: post #95
rconti wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the learning curve of getting an environment setup to do that is steeper.

It's not. Installing a C++ tool chain two decades ago is much harder than any current environment.

How so? Two decades ago was... 1998. You pop in Visual Studio 6.0 click a few buttons and it's done. On Linux we had gcc/g++, which came preinstalled in every distro.

Even if you factor in setting up Makefiles and autoconf and friends, those are nowhere near the complexity of configuring webpack for a SPA, let alone installing everything you need for a functioning stack. We're talking days, weeks, and even months of tedious fighting to get everything setup. You have to worry about setting up web servers, HTTPS, CORS, what type of backend API to use, what ports your various microservices live on, what HTTP framework to use, which babel settings to use. I spend way more time these days on architecture and overhead issues than feature work. It's not even ballpark close. C/C++ I set the Makefile up once for the architectures I need and I'm done.

In C++ in 1998 you were also never in danger of having to upgrade a major component in the middle of development. I've had to upgrade node, React, webpack, and others all within the same year. The shrinkwrap supply chain vanished and so did the costs of pushing out new releases. New releases, I might add, that have a shit ton of bugs (never, ever, ever touch a X.0 npm package, jesus christ do not do it)

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#138

Post by ghrifter »

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…

This is a good example. Im in my mid twenties and just discovered yesterday that (at least on Windows 10) that a user and a computer have _entirely_ different permissions.

I always thought it was account based! At least thats what my coworker and IT guy explained it to me as.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#139

Post by cchubitunes »

gxs wrote: post #56

I'll be honest with you. Programming is actually pretty easy to learn. As long as you have a vague idea of how logic works and are eager to learn with the right approach, you can pick it up pretty quickly. A lot of the concepts floated around in programming have crazy sounding names but are actually not that bad. What's really hard to learn, however, is full on software engineering. Knowing how something works end to…

Hi, I completely agree you. I am currently learning how to code. I am at that point where I know the syntax of of a few language pretty well and can code up small programs.

However, I do have difficulties in architecting and developing a fully functional application.

How did you solve this problem?

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#140

Post by lucidguppy »

I find this difficult to understand.

Computers in 1979 would be 500 dollars in equivalent today money for something like a sinclair zx-80.

Now computers are cheaper than lunch.

Computers of long ago couldn't do much... the raspi zero wireless can do a lot.

We're looking for treasure - but there's diamonds on the soles of our feet. We just need some curriculum worked out - like the article indicates computer usage + computer programming.

We assume a lot is just absorbed by kids - but it isn't it must be taught.

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