Teaching how to code is broken

I was referring to the people who, say, try to switch careers to tech and go to a bootcamp to learn to code. That just sounds really hard to me, a horribly compressed timeline, and I feel like you would always be worried about gaining professional competency vs just relaxing and enjoying the ride.

I knew a guy who actually went back for an undergrad and masters in CS in his fifties. He was a classmate and briefly a coworker. He was an excellent student and won some department award, and very organized, but somehow not very good at coding things. He would get lost in a sea of sticky pads and notebooks and take two weeks to do very small amounts of work. He was let go in the end. We forget how hard this stuff can be. (Ironically to me it’s everything else that seems hard, from music to mechanics to sports, coding is just so… logical.)

I will try without giving anything away, but you will need to help me here:

- Do you really think some people here haven't grown up with feminist teachers who took it way too far?

- How many times have you heard anything about "Girls who code" vs "Boys who code"?

- If you are actually interested and ready to see something ugly, just go back and try to read some "mens day" discussion on Twitter or I think even on HN too.

I've tried to be active in those days in a positive way. Last year I gave up. Any mention of today being mens day on company chat is immediately laughed off with something along the lines of "and so is 363 other days".

Meanwhile men die younger, have higher incarceration rates, more suicides, and gets less education.

And also the few times there is discussion it is often redirected to "how men are suffering from toxic masculinity" which is probably true but only a small problem.

Except the 10 hour a day part :) I believe the tendency to overwork is mostly a male thing.

The first part, let’s say the basic logic of programing is fine and relatively fast to learn. I have no problem with lessons starting there.

Where I find the problem is with the actual translation to real projects with the languaje, how to interface the code with the data, the server and the outside world.

The jump is huge! Of course you can overcome it with effort and stack overflow, but the feeling is like walking in a nice hill with clear views and path, and suddenly arriving to a vertical cliff with no clear routes up. You see others climbing easily, hanging out there, but you don’t even know where to set your first hand.

In my case, I’m starting with javascript in codecademy. The first lessons are more or less clear. Some concepts are harder to grasp or to express in code correctly, but with some exercises and effort you get them.

Then you start with real application stuff (promises, requests, Get, Post) , at first is easy enough, the concepts are not hard (the syntax is a bit harder, or at least the variety of syntax can be confussing). But suddenly you get thrown into AJAX, JSON, Frameworks, boilerplate. All at once, from 0. Copy this code, change this variable, lots of instructions but little learning or at leat a highlevel view of where you are.

I could choose another course, but I rather keep with the good parts in this one and look for the lacking lessons outside, than start hopping schools. Also I have some great friends that are experienced programers that can help me when I get too stuck.

Is interesting how different teachers explain differently. Some lessons are perfect for begginers, clear explanations, useful exercises. But in some lessons you can clearly feel how they are created by people used to teaching experienced programmers. Several concepts or tools thrown at you without further explanation, handwaving lots of steps, repeat this piece of code several times and that’s it.

I know that I can go through the material, google it, see youtube tutorials and classes and advance. I’m doing it, most of you have done it before. Not am impossible task by any means.

Maybe learning to code is easier than ever, but still… I find that it is way more complicated or with a steeper courve than necessary at the level I am currently.

There are lots of great resources to learn, but is difficult to find them structured in a coherent logical way for the learner! Is a bit frustrating TBH.