Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is the right mental model of coding. It seems a bit too similar to the idea that "most people simply cannot read". We all accept that nobody can read without instruction, practice, and feedback. Why is coding somehow different? If anything, I think reading is more foreign/difficult, because coding is explicit thinking, and we all think. Whereas reading is a completely synthetic act that starts with…
>None of us start out life being literate, but few people lack the ability to become literate. Why is coding different? To elaborate on the sibling comments, coding is generative work instead of passive consumption like reading. This split becomes easier to see when looking at a bunch of domains. Most of people can learn to read a book but very few can write a good book. Similarly, it's easier to re-tell someone else…
Re: Cognitive Biases in Software Development
#111I look at a coding problem and think, what problem did I or somebody else solve in the past that looks similar to this new problem? What’s different about this new problem? What’s the same? In that sense coding is more like reading, in that it is about pattern recognition and “reading the pattern”, then it is about creating something new entirely.