Don't Learn to Code, Learn to Program – But Come Back in 10 Years

That being said, I can't imagine anything more human and more powerful than text. If I want to give instructions to a _human_, the best way I know of is to write them down as clearly as possible. If this works with a complex person, why would it not work with an incredibly simple (from an abstract point of view, not implementation) microprocessor. After all, all processors have an extremely limited set of instructions (even CISC ones).

This desire for something that is not text seems misplaced. After all, text is (IMO) certainly better than pairs of numbers indicating operation and data. Writing is one of the greatest human achievements. To dismiss it in favor of touch or something graphically visual is to disregard its power and superiority to both touch and visual systems of communication.

When designing a system, if I am able to give it commands in English (or any other language), this would be vastly superior to anything visual or touch based that I can think of or that the article specifies (or rather doesn't). To take the whole system of a language like English with its complex idea-expression engine and its vast array of words (1 million++) and discard it is ridiculous. Now, we are not currently programming in English, or anything even remotely close (though many languages' grammar follows from natural language somewhat), but I do believe this is, and has been for decades, a goal that may one day be achievable. This is desirable as humans are naturally inclined towards language and those who practice it can be incredibly good communicators (programmers of reality).

It doesn't even get to the point (that programming does not have to be text-based) until halfway into the article.

The title and the objection to other people learning to code are at most tangentially related to that point. Just because there could be better ways to give instructions to machine doesn't mean other people should wait to learn how to instruct machines until those methods are developed.

I believe that's an example of visual/graphical programming, it's fairly mainstream in some areas and not vaporware.

Re: Rest of comment - Filtered site, I'll read it at home.

"All of the blood sweat and tears poured into making programming more productive over the years just isn't good enough. No, I haven't done anything, personally, to improve the situation. My plan is to continue bitching about how things aren't good enough until...well, indefinitely, because bitching about other people's efforts is much easier than doing the hard work of solving a challenging problem myself."

Is that too harsh? I don't see a single concrete, actionable proposal in there, let alone anything the author has personally done to fix the sorry state of programming.

I also think it's a huge disservice for him to dissuade his friends from programming until some state of nirvana is reached in programming tools. There are some hurdles to overcome, but a little bit of programming skill can greatly amplify the reach, scope and influence of non-programming talents.