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Learning to program is getting harder

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Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#211

Post by edflsafoiewq »

watwut wrote: post #65
gameswithgo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In 2015, VS took me multiple hours to install and often minutes to open. The most unpleasant piece of software I have ever used. I hear it's better now.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#212

Post by NortySpock »

eropple wrote: post #199
narrator wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is not harder than it used to be. For example, I was programming Macs in the pre-Internet era which meant lots of thick books. If you got stuck there was nobody who was going to help out and you just had to puzzle it out vs the example in one of the few how-to books like the famous Mac Programming Primer. Also, there was little open source, so you couldn't read the library source to figure out how things…

Maybe programming isn't, but perhaps finishing something is? Because while the hands-on-the-keyboard, moment-to-moment writing of code is almost certainly easier than ever, actually making a thing out of that is nowhere near as simple as it used to be. Building a nontrivial thing in QBasic was really, really easy. Building a nontrivial web app--whether it's strict server-side PHP or strict client-side JavaScript or w…

I do feel that one has to do some careful thinking and digging to find an appropriately sized project, library, and toolset before you can start working on a decent sized project you have a chance of finishing.

It took me 5 years of screwing around with Java, Python, and C++ "I want to help humanity" projects before I found that I really should just write small game clones in P5.js for fun. I'm a new stepdad, and if I want to be motivated to work on side projects in my tiny amount of free time, it's going to have to be a game.

Project: 80's game clone. Library: P5.js. Toolset: Notepad++, Python SimpleHTTPServer.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#213

Post by zbentley »

vinceguidry wrote: post #200
thesmallestcat wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the tire fire that is rvm became "standard", it was normal to just download the version you needed and build it from source. There's nothing forcing us to use crappy, obscure tools like rvm and rbenv. And I agree with you on all points.

It's a total shitshow. But since ruby manages everything with environment variables, you need some kind of tooling to manage multiple versions. Horrendous. Ruby should just standardize on a way to point projects to rubies. Instead of a zillion environment variables, just a shebang. It's how everything else works.

> Instead of a zillion environment variables, just a shebang. It's how everything else works.

I would like to tell you about an environment variable called PATH...

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#214

Post by worker840234 »

"If someone just wants to learn to program, they shouldn't have to learn system administration first."

I may disagree. Even though that's maybe an old school opinion I think every developer should at least understand his own development environment (including the OS), potentially also aspects of the target environment. The reason is because (1) the abstraction between the OS and an(y) (sofisticated) SDE is still leaky (sometimes for a reason) and (2) because a developer that cannot support operations when things turn bad at runtime is just a fair-weather captain.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#215

Post by matchagaucho »

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…

The downside of growing up on Commodores was their default imperative and procedural programming environment.

My introductions to object-oriented and functional programming came much later in life, and I can't help but wonder how many bad coding habits I had to "unlearn" as a result of my Commodore foundation.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#216

Post by JeremyNT »

eropple wrote: post #199
narrator wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is not harder than it used to be. For example, I was programming Macs in the pre-Internet era which meant lots of thick books. If you got stuck there was nobody who was going to help out and you just had to puzzle it out vs the example in one of the few how-to books like the famous Mac Programming Primer. Also, there was little open source, so you couldn't read the library source to figure out how things…

Maybe programming isn't, but perhaps finishing something is? Because while the hands-on-the-keyboard, moment-to-moment writing of code is almost certainly easier than ever, actually making a thing out of that is nowhere near as simple as it used to be. Building a nontrivial thing in QBasic was really, really easy. Building a nontrivial web app--whether it's strict server-side PHP or strict client-side JavaScript or w…

You can make a rails app and run it in heroku within an hour into your first tutorial. You can get an interactive JavaScript environment in any web browser.

I cut my teeth on c++ on lab computers. I was crap at it. The compilation and debug cycle was slow and frustrating. I couldn't Google for answers on anything.

It's easier than ever to start programming, without any question, and so many batteries are included everything else is easier too.

People in some ways do expect more from their software now, and to help deliver all that there are tons of open source libraries available that can feel overwhelming at times, but that's moving the goalposts. Somebody learning to code doesn't need all that just to get something basic and interesting working. If you're tasked with making a functionally equivalent piece of software now versus 20 years ago, it's better and easier in every single way.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#217

Post by epmaybe »

userbinator wrote: post #156
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 completely --- being one of the "older programmers" --- and think it could be phrased thus: a new generation of "coders" is being forced to learn how to write instructions for the machine, when they are barely computer-literate. Having taught some introductory CS courses a few years ago, the amount of struggling with basic things like file naming, directory hierarchies, and even simple hardware use was a cons…

I'd argue something a bit different. Coding is far more accessible today and far more visible as a field one could get a job in than ever before. As such, you have way more students trying to learn some introductory CS. Maybe the proportion of CS learners is going up while the proportion with more technical literacy stayed the same?

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#218

Post by eadmund »

narrator wrote: post #103
blackbagboys wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Programming is not harder than it used to be. For example, I was programming Macs in the pre-Internet era which meant lots of thick books. If you got stuck there was nobody who was going to help out and you just had to puzzle it out vs the example in one of the few how-to books like the famous Mac Programming Primer. Also, there was little open source, so you couldn't read the library source to figure out how things…

> Programming is not harder than it used to be. For example, I was programming Macs in the pre-Internet era which meant lots of thick books.

Same here, and I was a kid who a) had no idea what he was doing b) couldn't afford to buy Inside Macintosh c) really had no idea what he was doing. But honestly, I achieved more with C and some cargo-culted System 7 (6?) Pascal calls than I have with Go, with respect to UIs. I achieved more with HyperTalk than I have with Common Lisp, with respect to full-fledged application environments. Honestly, HyperTalk was by far the single most productive system I've ever used in my life.

Life was pretty great back then. I can only imagine how much better it could have been with highspeed Internet in my home. Or maybe we'd just be on the dozenth round of Macintosh Toolbox wrappers written by sleep-deprived college students by now.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#219

Post by eadmund »

acdha wrote: post #177
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…

One other factor I've wondered about over the years is how quickly they give up when they hit a problem. In the 90s and early 2000s people had to develop local diagnostic skills, read documentation, etc. more before things like Stack Overflow were so pervasive. I wouldn't say it's a scientific observation but I've definitely gotten the impression that it's taking people longer to outgrow the cycle of immediately sear…

> I wouldn't say it's a scientific observation but I've definitely gotten the impression that it's taking people longer to outgrow the cycle of immediately searching for a copy-paste answer and moving on without developing a better understanding of the issue for the next time something similar shows up.

I wonder if that's a phenomenon on the same spectrum as HN-Driven Development, where whatever one has last seen posted on HN is clearly the New Best Thing Evar. It's a bit like a voluntary outsourcing of one's own agency.

Re: Learning to program is getting harder

#220

Post by hobs »

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 am 31 years old. Reading this makes me feel like a million years old.
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