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Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

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Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#71

Post by SilasX »

rcthompson wrote: post #43

When I was in college, one CS professor explained the difficulty of coding to me in terms of discreteness vs continuity. In the real world, things are continuous. If you accidentally build your structure with 9 supports instead of 10, then you only lose 10% of the strength of the structure, more or less. The strength varies continuously with the amount of support. But if you're writing a 10-line program and you forge…

Unless you're doing Rails, in which case it'll be read as a magic method and guess what you meant :-P

Seriously, that was a major sticking point for me having programmed for a long time: going from "if you have not declared that identifier, game over" to "magic happens".

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#72

Post by pjbrunet »

ForHackernews wrote: post #36
pjbrunet wrote: post #29

It's only hard once you realize the commitment required, partly due to the pace of innovation, the depth and breadth of information available and the fact you're competing with the entire world, not just people in your city/state, and there's nobody regulating the influx of competition. A significant chunk of your life will be spent looking at a screen and there's a chance you could end up with a crippling case of ca…

C'mon, all of those things you listed (brain surgeon, rocket scientist, lawyer) are WAY harder and more expensive/time-intensive to get into than software engineering. If you feel like your knowledge is getting flushed away with a new platform, then you've been learning the wrong things.

Those people are smart but there's a textbook to follow, a clear path to graduation. I didn't mean to start a war of the professions, I'm sure there's already a Hacker News thread for that.

My point was, you can teach yourself a half-dozen programming languages, operating systems, databases... (which is inevitable for most developers) or you could have spent that time collecting diplomas in academia. This is not really a new concept, I read it somewhere else. Any profession that demands a lot of ongoing learning, I think people will quit because the effort may not seem worth it.

I agree you have to learn the "right" things but that takes experience and strategy. That's an interesting aspect of all of this. When everybody says "iPhone" you might bet on Android. Everyone says "Google Glass" and you might bet on Unity. If you have a crystal ball, maybe you're the next Warren Buffett ;-)

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#73

Post by inDigiNeous »

ForHackernews wrote: post #36
pjbrunet wrote: post #29

It's only hard once you realize the commitment required, partly due to the pace of innovation, the depth and breadth of information available and the fact you're competing with the entire world, not just people in your city/state, and there's nobody regulating the influx of competition. A significant chunk of your life will be spent looking at a screen and there's a chance you could end up with a crippling case of ca…

C'mon, all of those things you listed (brain surgeon, rocket scientist, lawyer) are WAY harder and more expensive/time-intensive to get into than software engineering. If you feel like your knowledge is getting flushed away with a new platform, then you've been learning the wrong things.

Really? How is being a brain surgeon more difficult than being a computer surgeon ? Understanding how a CPU completely works, on the assembler and even on hardware level is FRIGGING HARD. Computers are very complex and huge beasts of logic to really understand, and the best programmers have to understand a huge amount of technical skills and systems in order to get the wanted results.

I have no idea how much stuff a brain surgeon has to learn, but having the idea that there are people who are brain surgeons, it cannot be so much harder than being a really competent programmer.

Think John Carmack for example. That guy is a friggin beast in learning new systems and producing working code. That is really, really hard to do. It requires immensive amount of thinking and applying, and sitting in front of computers while balancing your body and health at the same time so you dont kill yourself in the process or go mentally insane and just give up.

Oh yeah, but Carmack is a rocket scientist too .. so, maybe not the best example.

But putting those jobs above really competent programmers is just stupid, if you want to be best in what you do, in any life path you are taking, it will take all of your effort, and then some more. So why compare. It's all about doing what you love.

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#74

Post by harpb »

Learning to code is not hard if you define the code to a smaller step of problem. Learning to code is impossible if you define it as "program for voice recognizition in english and spanish'. If problem is defined as "print Hello World' then you know how to code once you learn to solve that problem. Further more, it is easier problem to solve.

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#75

Post by dccoolgai »

freehunter wrote: post #46
dccoolgai wrote: post #20

When someone asks me "How do I learn to code?" I always say "You don't. You just code."

And then they give up and do something else, with lower self esteem this time. Seriously. "Just code" is the worst advice that everyone gives. It's trite. You'd be better off saying nothing at all. Do you think you can sit someone down with a C compiler and come back five years later to find they've written the Linux kernel? Don't say "just code". It's not helpful. It's disparaging. You don't tell a child "just walk"…

Of course one is not "born knowing how to code". Saying "Just code" does not mean "sit down by yourself and try to figure out the C compiler." It means, for most of the people I've met/worked with "Stop agonizing over what course to take, what book to read, what you should build first - just build." Implicit in that is that the person can ask me for help outside of some master/grasshopper relationship.. no I'm a coder and so are you. Just show me what you're working on and ask your buddy here for a hand if you need one.

I know a lot of people say something like "Just open up a git repo and start making pull requests on the back end of your gulp process after you wget the source from such-and-such repo"... Yeah, that annoys me too. I've had a lot of success just sitting people down with Chrome and have them hit Ctrl+Shift+I and show them a couple fun things with DOM maninpulation, etc. The point is, the worst thing to do that I think claims the most victims on the path to learning to code (I know I struggled with it for years) is just constantly deliberating about what is the "best way to learn" when you should just be playing, having fun and failing. That's the hump I try to nudge people over - the idea that you need to have permission or a "master" to become a developer.

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#76

Post by greggman »

I was never told learning to code was hard. I never found it hard. I found it fun. I was introduced in 8th grade by a friend who brought a listing to school of a small program he wrote in BASIC and it took off from there. I didn't have all the resources of the internet to help (this was 1980)

Like the article mentions there's just a ton to learn. 6 months of Code Academy will help you learn basic stuff, variables, loops, conditionals, maybe even objects and classes but only experience will help you with databases, files, sorting, patterns, threads, memory issues, debugging, big O thinking, cache coherence, performance, etc, etc and all the other stuff.

That comes from doing and doing over years and years.

Maybe it's something about certain people? I watched a guy with almost zero programming experience go through some tutorials online and then apply for a software engineering position at google. From everything he said he seemed confident he was going to get the job and was going to be very depressed if he didn't. All I could think was "REALLY? You really think 3 months of study makes you a programmer ready for Google?". I didn't say anything. Who am I to step on his dreams. Maybe he'd some how fake his way in.

He didn't

But it made me wonder why did he believe that that was all he needed in the first place? I think that's actually the more interesting discussion. There's a ton to learn in programming. You can learn some basic stuff quickly and maybe make some lights light up on your arduino art project but why would anyone think 2 to 6 months of study would make them ready for a programming job? Is that a new thing? Where did it come from?

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#77

Post by zwieback »

curyous wrote: post #45

Learning to code is not hard. At all. Not relative to things that actually are hard. Having trained as an electronic engineer, programming is by far one of the easiest things I've ever done, by an order of magnitude. You can tell by the number of teenagers that can code, how many teenagers can design a nuclear submarine? That is much harder to learn.

Yes and no. From my own experience I would agree that learning to code is initially easier than hard engineering disciplines. However, the worst code I've encountered is written by EEs and MEs that overestimate their skills.

And, as mentioned elsewhere, there's a big difference between writing an application or two and being involved in a larger software engineering effort.

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#79

Post by geebee »

ForHackernews wrote: post #36
pjbrunet wrote: post #29

It's only hard once you realize the commitment required, partly due to the pace of innovation, the depth and breadth of information available and the fact you're competing with the entire world, not just people in your city/state, and there's nobody regulating the influx of competition. A significant chunk of your life will be spent looking at a screen and there's a chance you could end up with a crippling case of ca…

C'mon, all of those things you listed (brain surgeon, rocket scientist, lawyer) are WAY harder and more expensive/time-intensive to get into than software engineering. If you feel like your knowledge is getting flushed away with a new platform, then you've been learning the wrong things.

Kind of surprised you threw "lawyer" in there.

Of course, there's a bit of a difference, in that you can call yourself a programmer even if you can't program. Whereas you can't call yourself a lawyer until you've passed the bar, which almost always involves attending 3 years of law school. So it's not really an apples to apples comparison. There is really no barrier to entry to programming that sets a minimum bar. So if you're comparing something with a minimum education standard with something with no minimum standard… well then yeah.

But personally, I don't think the required training to become a lawyer is anywhere close to as rigorous as what it takes to become a brain surgeon or rocket scientist, and if you look at typical pre-law majors, they aren't as difficult or rigorous as common undergrad degrees for software developers (CS, math, engineering, physical sciences). Let's face it, people don't drop out of poly sci because physics would be an easier major with more time to party.

Re: Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard

#80

Post by bhaumik »

rcthompson wrote: post #43

When I was in college, one CS professor explained the difficulty of coding to me in terms of discreteness vs continuity. In the real world, things are continuous. If you accidentally build your structure with 9 supports instead of 10, then you only lose 10% of the strength of the structure, more or less. The strength varies continuously with the amount of support. But if you're writing a 10-line program and you forge…

Wahoowa! This also explains the popularity of interactive platforms like Codecademy/CodeSchool/Treehouse, etc. Ton of handholding and pre-filled syntax. We describe them to our students as "coding on training wheels."

Cathy, a new frontend student, experienced similar struggles when starting her first real project - a simple HTML/CSS resume. She spent countless hours fixing minor typos and almost quit. It wasn't until she was reassured that this was _normal_ and "real" programming was much different from codecademy did she feel like she was truly learning. She wrote about her first month (with similar highs and lows as OP's visual) in this post: http://blog.thinkful.com/post/98829096308/my-first-month-cod....

side note: Erik (OP) is an incredible guy, we had the pleasure to share our experiences in Edtech and it's obvious that he truly cares about student outcomes.

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