Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#71

Post by solarmist »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #49
autokad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its not equivalent, but a really simple human can learn to drive and self driving cars haven't mastered that. I don't think its the case that a really simple human can learn to code. since that is harder than self driving, and ML still cant self drive, I am not worried yet.

> I don't think its the case that a really simple human can learn to code. People always think this about their own trade. But let me assure you that I am dumb as shit and a pretty decent programmer as well. I've taught programming to beginner adults, who were coming out of prison or the military, and out of hundreds I ran across maybe a handful that truly truly were not ever going to be able to learn it to competenc…

Yup. This.

Programming is not special knowledge or technique wise. It’s having a super high tolerance to frustration and somewhat lesser to being comfortable not knowing a solution.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#72

Post by solarmist »

Loughla wrote: post #31
nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people that work in tech at decent companies that can't buy a house. Every non major metro area mechanic, school teacher, city employee I know has a nice home. People should really consider doing lower paying boring work in places your mortgage can be $2000 a month.

>places your mortgage can be $2000 a month. This is shockingly major metro-area-centric. I want you to know that, and I feel like people on this board really need to understand how HIGH urban and suburban costs are. In many areas of the country, $2000/month is a seriously frighteningly massive home. For reference - in the middle of rural flyover, our 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1800 square foot, full basement, 2 car gar…

I don’t think that’s still true.

In Spokane, WA 10-15 years ago you could get starter homes for under $100k. Now that price is at least $300k (after cooling off for the last 12 months).

If interest rates hadn’t risen it might be somewhere in between though.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#73

Post by bunbunbun »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #67
bunbunbun wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed but also it’s weird how a lot of lay-off %s are 7% +\-1 though?

It's like one CEO did it and it opened the door for it to be socially acceptable climate wise for everybody to follow suit.

So, a fad?

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#74

Post by solarmist »

Loughla wrote: post #31
nicenewtemp84 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people that work in tech at decent companies that can't buy a house. Every non major metro area mechanic, school teacher, city employee I know has a nice home. People should really consider doing lower paying boring work in places your mortgage can be $2000 a month.

>places your mortgage can be $2000 a month. This is shockingly major metro-area-centric. I want you to know that, and I feel like people on this board really need to understand how HIGH urban and suburban costs are. In many areas of the country, $2000/month is a seriously frighteningly massive home. For reference - in the middle of rural flyover, our 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1800 square foot, full basement, 2 car gar…

OPs comment is true of minor metro areas as well from what I’ve seen. For example, Spokane, WA.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#75

Post by MuffinFlavored »

DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #60
pwinnski wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your friend has bought into the hype, as a lot of people have. There are very few people making "big tech money" who are not also putting in very long hours. They exist, but are often/usually in the (long) process of being "managed out." There's no doubt in my mind that a lot of this is a power-play by profitable companies to push back against developers who've collectively gained more power at the negotiating table.…

Dividends/buy-backs and layoffs are derived from the same concept. The company has excess resources they do not plan to use in the future. If you have excess cash, return it to the shareholder. If you have excess employees, reduce head count. It means the company doesn't want to build anything at the moment (for various reasons include prep for a downturn).

> The idea of comparing the expected return from a project to a risk-free rate, such as the return on a Treasury bond, is a common method used in finance to assess the riskiness of an investment. This is known as the cost of capital, which represents the minimum rate of return that an investment must generate to be considered economically viable.

How would you breakdown the distribution of projects inside of Apple from a return perspective?

Some will be 0% or negative due to R&D.

Some will be massively profitable (net 20-40% margins).

How do you decide what the right amount of loss-leading R&D projects to have is?

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#76

Post by livingdeadpgmr »

It seems that programming on any heavily used platforms will eventually come down to quality and price. I have seen that when the bosses see that the quality of the software can be managed at a lower level (quality being lower) then the software jobs will go to the lowest price. With remote working now stable and accepted, the software jobs will go to a job market that is cheaper. Also when you factor in tools that are able to create software for users by users just describing what they want and the users can update the requirements themselves, software jobs will evaporate quickly. Writing software will go by the wayside as a career. There will always be exceptions like, platforms that are not as popular, hardware software, specialty software, etc. Time now to start thinking about security in your job and learning skills that will keep a paycheck coming in.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#77

Post by MuffinFlavored »

bunbunbun wrote: post #73
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like one CEO did it and it opened the door for it to be socially acceptable climate wise for everybody to follow suit.

So, a fad?

I would say fad is probably a poor choice of words given the perspective "if one CEO thought it was appropriate (they let headcount + salaries creep up too high" and deemed it was in the realm of "action needed to correct", it probably wasn't baseless.

Have you taken a look at the year over year headcount growth of some of these companies? If anything, you could make the argument that 7% isn't enough :/

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#78

Post by potbelly83 »

Honestly as a senior engineer at a FAANG like startup, coding is but a small part. Most of my week is split across

- coding

- architecting systems (if we're in the design phase of a project)

- writing design documentation

- researching business requirements (basically understanding the domain i'm working in)

- getting cross org support for my work and meeting stake holders

So yeah for most tech roles nowadays, learn to code is the equivalent of learn to send an email. I think the days are numbered for developers who just want a bunch of Jira tickets given to them and be left alone.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#79

Post by dghlsakjg »

feoren wrote: post #62

No, "learn to code" is now "learn to read". Long ago, people could get work as a scribe or scrivener -- knowing how to read and write was, on its own, enough to get you a job. As literacy became more prevalent, it wasn't enough to "just read". You had to "read and ____". Similar to business; I would not recommend someone get "just a business degree" so they can apply to any company in the world. I'd recommend they ge…

You need to work with some Gen. A or whatever comes after gen z.

They have a level of computer literacy that is shockingly bad. They use computers everyday, but only within the walled gardens of google classroom/iOs/Android.

I taught an after school HTML/CSS for grade school age kids, and the majority of them didn't know about the concept of a directory structure. Even just saving a text file (instead of having a file autosave to their google drive) was a foreign concept.

Kids these days very much are NOT digital natives in the way that millenials and Gen x were.

Re: Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?

#80

Post by [deleted] »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #29
shadowgovt wrote: post #18

Trades are a great idea. ... I don't think I'd specifically recommend "Learn to drive a big rig" though. In addition to the industry itself being a real bad deal for vehicle operators ( https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/business/truck-driver-sho... ), it's the segment of the transportation sector centered in the crosshairs of disruption-through-automation. The self-driving vehicle companies that laid off were, broad…

Talk to a tradie who was around in 2008. Ask an older tradie how their body is doing. Ask a tradie how often clients don't pay their bills. Ask a tradie how many paid sick days they get. The trades are one way to make a living wage, but they definitely aren't an easy way to do it. There are some union jobs, but largely the trades require you to run your own business in one way or another. Even your average car mechan…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN