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So You Want to be a Programmer

codinghorror.com

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Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#81

Post by pohl »

overgard wrote: post #57
pohl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rising tide of literacy lifts all boats, that's why I care. I still don't get why Atwood does, though.

There's a big difference between literacy and knowing how to code. Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge. That's huge. That gives you access to everything if you're willing to put in the effort. That's freedom. "Code literacy" means knowing how to tell a computer to do something reliably and the associated lessons that come with that. That's good, but it's not the same. One is the ability to…

Literacy means access to the sum total of the world's knowledge.

Funny you should use the word 'overblown' after saying something like this. Literacy, at best, gives access to the world's words, not the world's knowledge, and actually only the fraction of the words that are in the language in which one is literate. I'm not just speaking of natural languages, either. A considerable amount of the world's knowledge is expressed in the languages of mathematics and music, for which literacy in English is weak preparation. Another enormous chunk of the world's knowledge is experiential, for which any language is a weak substitute for apprenticeship (at best) or mere doing (at least).

The world's knowledge lies behind and endless chain of conceptual hurdles, and the ease with which one can jump over these hurdles while running on the legs of literacy is determined by everything else that one studies.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#82

Post by pohl »

randomdata wrote: post #60
pohl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rising tide of literacy lifts all boats, that's why I care. I still don't get why Atwood does, though.

Why programming? The study of mechanics seems like it would have a much more profound impact on average people's lives. Often, it seems, I find myself hitting walls in the physical realm where someone with the right background would just build a simple machine to overcome the problem. I would never discourage the pursuit of knowledge, I'm just not seeing why programming gets its very own pedestal. It seems no more im…

Where I'm from, most schools already have shop classes where practical arts like mechanics are taught. So the status quo here is that mechanics is on a pedestal relative to programming.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#83

Post by gfodor »

huggyface wrote: post #15
j2labs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand Jeff's motivation for writing his piece. Alas, I just hope people learn to code if they want, or don't if they don't want to. That's all. No one else can make the decision for them. I also go out of my way to teach people coding concepts. I recommend Zed's books to beginners. I recommend stackoverflow or quora for asking / answering questions. Just be helpful to beginners and help them ignore the rabble…

I understand Jeff's motivation for writing his piece. You mean that he's trying to revive his blog now that he's out of the stackexchange thing, building a readership that he can monetize in the future? Hence these sorts of confrontational, pablum entries that bizarrely make the front page of HN. I don't get it. If these were usenet posts they would never, in a million years, see any attention.

I've never understood why coding horror gets so much attention. Every article usually fits in one or two buckets. The first type is an inflated, long winded, well marketed article about a ridiculously simple topic or idea that tries to sound more insightful than it is ("Look at how well designed my new cat food dispenser is.") The second type is when a more controversial subject is broached, like performance tuning or computer literacy, and the result is always the same: shallow analysis, often peppered with completely incorrect statements, a massive blowback from people who know what they are talking about, then a series of retort posts that dig the hole deeper until the meme finally burns off.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#84

Post by dmd149 »

Based on my personal experience, you're right.

I'm not a programmer, but I recently launched a Wordpress site that I wanted to modify. Mostly just CSS/HTML stuff, but I'm beginning to realize I'll probably need to learn a little bit of PHP.

I had started the CodeAcademy lessons before I launched the wordpress site, but it got a little boring and I didn't see the point.

Once I launched the site, the CodeAcademy courses became a lot more fun. The process looks something like

1. Hm, I want to change how this widget looks.

2. Hm, there is no plugin for that.

3. Hit "View Source" and try to track down what the widget looks like in HTML.

4. Find it, realize you don't really know what it means.

5. Do some googling, make some changes, doesn't work or screws it up.

6. Do CodeAcademy lesson on HTML or CSS or whatever.

7. Eventually fix it.

8. Feel really, really good.

I think for most people it'll be hard to learn to code in a vacuum (myself included). Having a project where coding may help you significantly is a much better way to learn it. It may be messier, but it's much more rewarding.

This is not just a lesson for people who think they should learn to code, it's a lesson for people who want to learn anything. The most important thing you can do to learn something is to start a project that you're passionate about that will eventually require you to learn whatever it is you need to learn.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#85

Post by nicholassmith »

I like how in the first paragraph he assures himself that the criticism came from people who didn't read the article properly. After all, if you didn't read it properly you'd surely agree.

Poor way to bolster support for your follow up really, 'you didn't understand what I was saying, I'll use different words'.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#86

Post by parfe »

This is just a dumb cry for attention now.

Any "noncoder" who has ever repeated the same menial task on a computer for a week straight could benefit from programming. It's not a career. It's a tool and a useful one.

People in general need to love coding like they need to love hammering in nails or vacuuming the house, or manually massaging data for reports to various organizations.

>And if you're reading this and thinking, "screw this Jeff Atwood guy, who is he to tell me whether I should learn to code or not", all I can say is: good! That's the spirit!

And fuck Jeff for changing his tune from "Not everyone should learn to program" to "Well if you think you need to program, good for you! That's what I meant all along!" He still needs to walk it back. You can't possibly know when programming could be used without a basic understanding of programming.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#87

Post by benatkin »

vibrunazo wrote: post #46

A) What Jeff thinks we're saying: "Everyone should be programmers so the world would be a better place" B) What Jeff thinks is the right: "Everyone should be technically literate for their own good" C) What we're actually saying: "Everyone should be technically literate for their own good" You can observe that B and C are the same. So we actually agree, but some haven't noticed it yet. Only because the sentence "lear…

No, Jeff is actually wrong here. He's had two articles and numerous comments to point out what he really meant by the statement "Please Don't Learn to Code", and he still maintains that programming is only for programmers.

We have a major non-programmer programming community with R now. There are, and have been, many others.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#88

Post by slantyyz »

icebraining wrote: post #73
slantyyz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You don't need to be a programmer to think logically. That's true. On the other hand, knowing the basics of coding makes it easier to do more even as an end user. Like writing a simple macro in Excel to do something it can't otherwise do. I see coding as a useful life skill. I know how to do simple things like change a light switch, fix simple leaks, change a tire, hem a pair of pants, make a cheesecake, etc. but…

But did you learn those life skills upfront because you thought "it's important to know how to make a cheesecake", or did you learn as you needed them? Because Atwood doesn't seen anything "wrong" with learning to code; he does view learning it upfront as premature optimization: Here's a person who a) found an interesting problem, b) attempted to create a solution to the problem, which naturally c) led them to learni…

About half of those skills were pushed on me by my parents because they thought it was important, the other half by necessity or interest.

But, if I have kids, I intend to teach all of the basic skills that I can, which I guess could be seen as premature optimization.

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#89

Post by benatkin »

I think a way to counter this would be to collect short articles by people who learned to code because someone encouraged them to, and are benefiting from it. He argues that people who are going to be great programmers will discover coding as their passion just by looking around. I disagree. Many in my generation learned to code when a teacher showed them LOGO. How is that fundamentally different from organizing study groups, or trying to make a website, book, or email list that will get people who are new to programming to discover the joy of programming?

Re: So You Want to be a Programmer

#90

Post by andrewflnr »

tjmc wrote: post #40
andrewflnr wrote: post #35

Jeff wants a world where we programmers can make computers perfectly usable without understanding how they work. I don't think this will ever be the case. The abstraction will always leak a little, and people will benefit from having at least some idea of how computers and the programs that run on them work under the hood. Regardless, in the mean time I would prefer everyone to have as much technical competence as po…

If you've ever seen a 2 year old or, worse, a baby boomer playing with an iPad you'd realize we're basically there. At this point Jeff's car analogy is about right. Is it useful to know how your car and computer work under the hood? Yes. Is it necessary ? Increasingly less so.

Even cars still break down, and when they do it's very useful, if not necessary, to have an idea of what's going on. At the least, you become harder to rip off when you take it to a professional.

Computers and cars themselves, generally, are not necessary, just very useful. An understanding of math or good writing is not necessary in any really strong sense. We can strongly recommend, or even mandate, something that isn't necessary, and often do. I don't see why programming is different, or even less useful. I will continue to recommend it to anyone who's open to it.

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