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Please don't learn to code

codinghorror.com

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Re: Please don't learn to code

#111

Post by pjungwir »

I mostly agree with Jeff here, although I do think it's good for people to learn more about technology and the Internet. But it's more helpful to learn things at a higher level than code. I recently gave a talk to some Wharton entrepreneurs about web architecture, and I started with the "learn to code" movement. My slides are here:

http://wharton-vip-webapps-talk.heroku.com/slides/1

To a lot of people (and in the context of my talk, everyone), "learn to code" doesn't mean starting a fun hobby; it means building an MVP. In my talk, I gave several reasons why programming is rewarding and fun, but I also said if you're a business person, doing it yourself might not be the best business decision. The third slide at that URL makes the point that to build the full stack of a Rails application actually requires mastering quite a lot of technologies (fewer if you deploy in a PaaS, of course).

Re: Please don't learn to code

#112

Post by jkahn »

srconstantin wrote: post #104

I'm kind of the villain of this piece -- a relatively novice coder who expects to apply for programming-heavy jobs in the future. Here's why I think I'm not actually a villain: 1. I'm not under any illusions that people should pay me mega-bucks because I can program at all. I haven't hit my 10,000 hours yet; closer to 1000. You should hire me because I'm a mathematician who can program, not because I'm a hacker geniu…

I think you're much closer to a programmer than a layman that programs.

The straw man about reducing the amount of bad code in the world is garbage. Just code. If you're getting a benefit from it - or hell, if you just enjoy it - do it. You have nothing to apologize for.

The whole elitist concept of only sanctioned programmers coding is just arrogant. Even the best programmers wrote awful code before they were great. Doesn't mean they shouldn't have kept it up.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#113

Post by Nate75Sanders »

tomstuart wrote: post #20

This is a depressingly philistine perspective. A basic grasp of computational thinking has never been more important. It's become a prerequisite for making informed decisions about the world we live in. The world may or may not need more working programmers (or mathematicians, novelists or plumbers), but why wouldn't we want to teach these elementary skills to as many people as possible?

Yes.

Came here to post something along these lines and to link to this 2006 article by Jeanette Wing, head of the Carnegie Mellon computer science department:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing0...

Re: Please don't learn to code

#114

Post by sodelate »

i have been programming for almost seven years,and only three years as a programmer.i don't think it bad to learn to code,but don't take coding as a way of thinking,you just need to know one or two programming languages,and not more.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#115

Post by mitsche »

primecommenter wrote: post #74
marcusf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to vocational coding/programming/hacking. Seems like you're being facetious for the point of it?

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 seem to be a bit disconnected from reality. If I told any one of my friends who are not programmers by trade to look for code samples, they would either not understand what I'm talking about, or simply not know where to look.

Most people don't even have the slightest idea what kind of problems software can solve. Jeff Atwood seems to interpret "learn to code" as "learn to set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH variable". Others—myself included—think that having at least a bit of exposure to programming provides you with a better overall understanding of how computers operate.

I don't think it's necessary to have that understanding. But neither is speaking a second natural language. Apart from acquiring the skills themselves, learning any of those will teach you meaningful things about yourself and your environment, which seems to be worthwhile.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#116

Post by dgregd »

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 ...

Re: Please don't learn to code

#117

Post by rytis »

adeelk wrote: post #95
shin_lao wrote: post #14

I don't like this post and what it implies. If tomorrow you want to learn to cook, how would you feel if a master chef told you "No, don't. You'll never be as good as me. If you're hungry, come to my restaurant instead". I think there's nothing wrong with learning a new skill, whoever you are, whatever you do. Learning new skills is what makes us human.

If tomorrow you want to learn to cook, how would you feel if a master chef told you "No, don't. You'll never be as good as me. If you're hungry, come to my restaurant instead". I think people who want to learn to program are learning already. The right analogy would be teaching everyone cooking in elementary school as a required subject, together with reading, writing and mathematics.

> The right analogy would be teaching everyone cooking in elementary school as a required subject, together with reading, writing and mathematics.

Would that be a bad thing? Many-many-many moons, sorry - summers, ago they did that. Along with maths/etc pupils were taught practical stuff, like woodwork, cookery, etc. Not that the goal was to make them all carpenters or cooks, but just to give an idea what it is like and teach to look after themselves.

So I think that coding is something along the woodwork lines. New generations should get at least an idea of what it's like, regardless whether they're going to use it professionally or not.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#118

Post by jiggy2011 »

YmMot wrote: post #89
jiggy2011 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I've always though that at a conceptual level computers are not especially complicated machines (for example a turing machine) and most reasonably intelligent people shouldn't have any problem understanding them. It's also interesting that you mention the holistic approach because this is exactly how many people view computers, in the same way they might view a mechanical device. I have seen people reaso…

Indeed, the basics are all relatively simple...in fact a lot of the basics are things people do intuitively...it's just they've never really been told or thought about how it would work as a generalized computing machine.

I think the problem is that often when people attempt to explain "computers" they end up explaining things about the Windows operating system like the registry and the "C drive" etc.

Of course this stuff is massively complicated and the majority of HN readers probably don't really understand the whole thing so what hope would some random person have?

If people could understand a basic turing machine type system and possibly write simple assembler to run on it then they could be told "this is all your PC, your smartphone and your iPad are just they have lots and lots of window dressing".

Re: Please don't learn to code

#119

Post by jiggy2011 »

edw519 wrote: post #108

Programmer Hierarchy: Level 0: (Many bosses I have had) Level 1: "Hello World" Level 2: Does something Level 3: Updates a data base Level 4: Solves a little problem Level 5: Produces value Level 6: Sidetracks other programmers to maintain Level 7: Provides a platform for other value producers Level 8: Solves big problems Level 9: Still produces value years later Everyone should get past Level 0. If you're going to ge…

I think I just about managed level 7, I feel ok now.

Re: Please don't learn to code

#120

Post by decklin »

One thing in this article I do agree with is that you should try to write "as little code as possible". But it doesn't follow that if you don't know how to code, you'll write zero code, and do well by that metric! You'll be unable to identify people who can code well, and hire poor coders to solve your problem, ending up with lots of low-quality code, in situations where an experienced programmer could have come up with a better solution ("hmm, I've seen this before...").

Even the slightest familiarity with programming here will help someone understand that when an offshore development house says "oh, sure, we'll just throw 20 more people at the project", that will not necessarily make it done better or faster. This is a Good Thing. And this has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Bloomberg is implementing his own Ruby or .NET scripts.

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