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Please don't learn to code

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Re: Please don't learn to code

#201

Post by wes-exp »

philbarr wrote: post #4
exDM69 wrote: post #2

I recently learned how to plumb a little. Now I can do minor household plumbing fixes without having to hire professional help. A very useful skill indeed. I know it's a demanding activity that requires more than reading a book and knowing how to hold a wrench, so I know to stay away from the serious pipes and stick to little fixes.

Exactly - everyone should learn basic plumbing! Not the best analogy he could have used.

I don't think he means that learning plumbing is a bad idea.

I think his point is just that a big hype cluster around learning plumbing would seem silly. There are a lot of useful skills in the world. Programming is one. Plumbing is another. Let's not get crazy and over-emphasize programming.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#202

Post by slantyyz »

dgregd wrote: post #116
jkahn wrote: post #23

I really, really disagree with Jeff Atwood here. Jeff has interpreted "learn to code" with "become a programmer". They're not the same thing. I don't think that is what this meme is about at all. Programming is logical thinking in practise. Programming is breaking a problem set down, thinking step by step through it, thinking of edge cases, and making it work. There is nothing wrong with Jeff's BASIC example, if that…

Exactly. Not everyone is going to be an engineer, accountant. Yet everyone learns math at school. Same for biology, physics ...

I look at it as a useful life skill like cooking your own meals, doing your own laundry, changing a tire, making minor household repairs, etc.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#203

Post by sasha-dv »

jkahn wrote: post #23

I really, really disagree with Jeff Atwood here. Jeff has interpreted "learn to code" with "become a programmer". They're not the same thing. I don't think that is what this meme is about at all. Programming is logical thinking in practise. Programming is breaking a problem set down, thinking step by step through it, thinking of edge cases, and making it work. There is nothing wrong with Jeff's BASIC example, if that…

>There is nothing wrong with Jeff's BASIC example, if that is where the mayor of NYC ends up.

Are you sure about it?

What if he suddenly starts thinking that he actually knows what goes into building software?

I have this horror scene in my mind where Bloombergs of this world are terrorizing their developers, with their "deep knowledge" of computers that they picked up by doing an online JavaScript course, I mean "code year".

Democratization of programming is a lofty ideal, but in the reality anybody who wants to learn to code will do so if he has a computer. This latest fad is nothing more than a trivialization of a complex skill and an attempt by some non-technical hipsters to be even more hip. If plumbing was cool we would see the same people vowing to learn how to plumb this year.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#204

Post by mhurron »

sanderjd wrote: post #148
primecommenter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be facetious, just misunderstanding whatever point original commenter is making. "Most people don't what programming even looks like"? I don't think that is true because most people can search for code samples if needed.

You are very wrong about this - people who know how to "search for code samples" know what programming looks like, but they are far from the majority. I, for one, wish more people understood what programming "looks like", so that I could actually talk to people about what I do without them being completely confused. People can visualize what nearly every other profession does day-to-day, but what programmers do is a…

> People can visualize what nearly every other profession does day-to-day

No they don't. They know an architect draws pictures of buildings. An engineer draws pictures of a bridge and hammers away at a calculator (actually the first thing most people think of with engineer is probably either boats or trains or Star Trek). A banker sits and acts like a total dick. What architects, engineers and bankers really do is a complete mystery to people.

When someone asks what you do and they do not have any domain specific knowledge, you say you write applications, you're a programmer. That's all they want to know, they don't care what the details of what you write are. They don't want to know the differences between languages. They don't want to know what a structured grammar is and why you care about it. Those are details of your job, that's not what they were asking.

"I'm a system administrator. I keep computers working." That is the maximum extent people want to know about what I do. They're being polite in asking, they don't really want to know details. And at the end of the day they still think that all I do is sit on my ass and look at a computer screen. Just like the way they visualize a programmer, and a banker and a ...

Re: Please don't learn to code

#205

Post by johnbender »

"can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?"

I certainly can't, but the sample set of one doesn't make for a convincing body of evidence. Moreover he's chosen to cherry pick someone in a position as a figure head/leader who has to delegate nearly all of his work as a function of time constraints. Generally speaking, Michael Bloomberg shouldn't learn to code but it wouldn't hurt if one of his advisers did.

"You should be learning to write as little code as possible. Ideally none."

This conflates individual programming best practices with a desired limit on the total amount of software written across teams and programmers.

"It assumes that coding is the goal."

Wrong. Most proponents of software education want people to understand the domain enough to function and _maybe_ get things done.

I stopped reading at this point.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#206

Post by spinchange »

randomdata wrote: post #164
spinchange wrote: post #151

What a negative message- not unlike the, "Don't be an Entrepreneur" talk from last week. I don't understand these high profile, obviously successful people with public personas being all, "Don't try to do what I did," thinking that will resonate.

I feel the takeaway is that you already, deep down, know what you need to do - so do that. If you have a burning desire to learn how to program, be an entrepreneur, or whatever else you need to do to make your life complete, you're not going to let a little article get in your way. It is, however, sage advice if you want to become a programmer only because you see dollar signs, despite every bone in your body telling…

I'm not looking for Jeff Atwood or Phil Libin's approval or permission and I don't think many folks reading HN are either. :) Although perhaps I am guilty of looking for validation on some sub conscious level, but who isn't? Ultimately I was just responding to the tone of the post - he makes many perfectly legitimate points. I just think he's missing the most important general one which is that it's not a bad thing for people to learn to program and become more technically/computationally literate.

Edit- tone isn't really the right word. It's the basic idea of the post that I dislike and not for reasons related to my own learning or business. I think it reflects a view of people, learning, etc, that's inconsistent with what's possible and all the opportunities that are open to everyone right now. I understand where you're coming about the sage advice, but think that's the risk/case with anything.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#209

Post by dkersten »

wes-exp wrote: post #198
rozap wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I convinced a friend of mine that in Python, we only code using the letter "s". Why do you think it's called Python, after all? She believed me.

To be fair, all programs sort of get reduced to 1s and 0s. Given this fact, I don't consider the idea of coding only with the letter 's' that much of a stretch. You know, in lisp I code with parentheses!

I know you're joking and this isn't really too relevant to your comment at all, but the 1s and 0s thing that non-techies fixate on is just stupid.

Programming (and computers in general) have nothing to do with 1s and 0s and saying stuff like "at the end of the day, its all 1s and 0s" is like saying that at the end of the day banking just comes down to scrap pieces of pressed tree pulp or a bakers job is just about a bunch of grain or a teachers job reduces to sitting in a room for a few hours or whatever silly analogy you want to dream up.

All of these things are implementation details that, really, are irrelevant to pretty much everyone everywhere. If you are dealing with low level digital systems you will encounter 1s and 0s (and analog voltage and resistance and capacitance and a whole lot more besides), but usually (especially when building something complex like a computer) this gets abstracted away pretty quickly.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#210

Post by rapind »

patdennis wrote: post #161
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are right there are probably a hundred people on here able to provide a working MVP alongside you and do it faster, cleaner and pick up on solutions you cant possibly know yet. Be a domain expert. But learn to code anyway :-)

I'm sure anyone here could do that. But how many people here are looking for a non technical co-founder? Coders are solving their own problems, and until I can hack together a prototype I don't think I'll be able to draw any attention from real programmers.

I think I'd actually prefer a pure domain expert who can express their business and ideas well than a half-assed programmer.

No offence, but what often ends up happening is you turn into a know-it-all client. "This should only take an hour. You just have to loop over these results and format them...".

Finding a technical co-founder is a sales process where you need to prove that it's a good idea and that you've made a significant investment yourself (I would prefer if it wasn't code) like thinking through the interface, and as many use cases / stories as you can think of, and describing in detail the problem(s) being solved.

The pitches we hate are the guys who know you through a friend who want you to make a Groupon-like application for their specific market, without having invested more than the 5 minutes it took to write it down while baked. I'm still not going to be sold on this idea even if they manage to throw together some terrible PHP site that sort of acts like a real application.

That being said, I'm in the boat that thinks at least some rudimentary programming skills would be useful for everyone.

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