The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
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Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#2While on the surface of it, sure, programming is a skill and not an innate talent, it would be foolish to compare it to other career fields in that way. You can go to school to learn how to be an architect, then go and get a job as an architect and be immediately productive. You can go to school to learn how to lay bricks, then go to a job site and immediately start building something.
You cannot go to school to learn how to be a programmer, and then expect immediately to be productive at any arbitrary programming job, unless you're a talented coder. The education gap is too great. It's like medicine in which you need a few years of residency before the medical field considers you fully competent.
If you go to code school and learn Rails and React, then you can expect to be somewhat immediately productive on a Rails / React project. You can't expect anything out of them if it's not a Rails / React project. They may be able to ramp up quickly, if they're talented. If they're not talented, then they won't be able to, and the employer has to take the hit.
We will need a revolution in software development pedagogy before individual aptitude stops mattering to employers. The state of education at the moment is so bad that unschooled yet talented individuals can be much much better at fulfilling business requirements than trained and educated professionals. Try that with medicine!
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#3If our starting point is that programming is mostly about skills, productivity starts getting interesting - what does productivity mean?
My personal take is that it means solving problems with less wasted effort. Less code (a 0.1× programmer can solve problem with 10% of the code - https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/), but also by solving the right problem, and coming up with better solutions (https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro...).
These are all skills you can learn. And I think focusing on learning technologies obscures a lot of these skills, since they're about communication and listening and project management.
For productivity in terms of technological knowledge I'm starting to think that, since choosing which tool is more important than how to use it, a better way to get better is to study case studies. Instead of trying to learn "how can I use Mongo, how can I use PostgreSQL" you try to learn "when should I use Mongo, when should I use PostgreSQL".
I'd love to hear about good sources of case studies. http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html is good, but doesn't cover kind of programming one would do at a company, much.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#4> The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned.
Aren't these all talents?
* learning many things
* learning difficult things
* recalling things you've learned when you need them
If something is a skill, one would expect all engineers to get better at it with practice. But there are many abilities in engineers that don't seem to work that way.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#5While on the surface of it, sure, programming is a skill and not an innate talent, it would be foolish to compare it to other career fields in that way. You can go to school to learn how to be an architect, then go and get a job as an architect and be immediately productive. You can go to school to learn how to lay bricks, then go to a job site and immediately start building something. You cannot go to school to lear…
Or, employers will start taking the long view and actually start investing in their employees.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#6While on the surface of it, sure, programming is a skill and not an innate talent, it would be foolish to compare it to other career fields in that way. You can go to school to learn how to be an architect, then go and get a job as an architect and be immediately productive. You can go to school to learn how to lay bricks, then go to a job site and immediately start building something. You cannot go to school to lear…
Or, employers will start taking the long view and actually start investing in their employees.
That's not an investment, that's giving your money away. Would you spend $X0,000 on something that can walk out the door at any moment?
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#7While on the surface of it, sure, programming is a skill and not an innate talent, it would be foolish to compare it to other career fields in that way. You can go to school to learn how to be an architect, then go and get a job as an architect and be immediately productive. You can go to school to learn how to lay bricks, then go to a job site and immediately start building something. You cannot go to school to lear…
While I totally agree with the things you said and that talent does play a factor, but I feel like playing devil's advocate here a little bit and point how that you can replace every instance of "talented" with "dedicated" and what you said still works.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#8> The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Aren't these all talents? * learning many things * learning difficult things * recalling things you've learned when you need them If something is a skill, one would expect all engineers to get better at it with practice. But there are many abilities in engineers that don't seem to work that way.
They're definitely learnable skills. The thing I find with engineering is that most skills remain untrained with experience.
If years of experience meant you'd be better at a skill, then older would be able to reverse park very quickly. But without deliberate training, most skills don't improve.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#9While on the surface of it, sure, programming is a skill and not an innate talent, it would be foolish to compare it to other career fields in that way. You can go to school to learn how to be an architect, then go and get a job as an architect and be immediately productive. You can go to school to learn how to lay bricks, then go to a job site and immediately start building something. You cannot go to school to lear…
While I totally agree with the things you said and that talent does play a factor, but I feel like playing devil's advocate here a little bit and point how that you can replace every instance of "talented" with "dedicated" and what you said still works.
That's outside of an employee's ability to decide to be. The business has deadlines and needs, and writes the checks, so it's up to them to decide how long it takes for an employee to become a net asset for the company.
Re: The Programming Talent Myth (2015)
#10> The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Aren't these all talents? * learning many things * learning difficult things * recalling things you've learned when you need them If something is a skill, one would expect all engineers to get better at it with practice. But there are many abilities in engineers that don't seem to work that way.
Learning is a skill you can get better at, so it's just a dependency. Learning is not an unchangeable talent. Some books that will help you learn better:
* Power of Intuition, about naturalistic decision making - https://www.amazon.com/Power-Intuition-Feelings-Better-Decis...
* How Learning Works - https://www.amazon.com/How-Learning-Works-Research-Based-Pri... (my review: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/03/19/how-learning-works/)
No doubt others can recommend more books.