3 ms·

The problem that I see is the imprecision of english when it comes to the word "hard". There are many different kinds of hard. There's hard like "I have to put

The problem that I see is the imprecision of english when it comes to the word "hard". There are many different kinds of hard. There's hard like "I have to put effort into it", there's hard like "if you were not born being able to do it, you can't do it", and there's hard like "even people who can do it are only capable at their absolute best moments". So the issue is not "Is programming difficult?" - clearly any learned skill is difficult to bring to an expert level. The question I see people asking is, "Can the average person with diligence and application ever learn to program well?", and the answer is obviously yes, they can. It's not "hard" like running a <3:50 mile is "hard". It's also not hard like "Can you taste PTC or distinguish red and green", in that you either "are born with it" or aren't, and find it effortless if you are capable. So many people that I've met assume that they're fundamentally incapable of understanding algorithmic thought, and that's very sad. They don't need to be Kernighan or Torvalds in order to gain value from learning some programming skills.

rubber_duck 10y ago
I think "learning to code" is more ambiguous. I have a designer friend getting in to web design - I've helped him out pick up some jQuery - he learned the stuff that was useful to him pretty fast. Is he a programmer ? No. Can he write code ? Yes. So yea writing code is easy, copy-paste and replace the stuff that seems relevant to you, especially when you have a quick iteration method like a REPL. Control flow might take a while to fully grasp but still it's not hard to understand, but takes practice to get comfortable with.
- kamaal 10y ago
  Humans generally have a way to look for patterns of repeated effort that could be automated, and then proceed to automate them one way or the other. It has nothing to with programming. We are trained through evolution to conserve resources as much as we possibly can. The guy who invented the wheel was the first programmer.
benaadams 10y ago
> The problem that I see is the imprecision of english when it comes to the word "hard". Learning to code is NP-Hard ?
- Bombthecat 10y ago
  N log hard :)

rubber_duck 10y ago

I think "learning to code" is more ambiguous. I have a designer friend getting in to web design - I've helped him out pick up some jQuery - he learned the stuff that was useful to him pretty fast. Is he a programmer ? No. Can he write code ? Yes. So yea writing code is easy, copy-paste and replace the stuff that seems relevant to you, especially when you have a quick iteration method like a REPL. Control flow might take a while to fully grasp but still it's not hard to understand, but takes practice to get comfortable with.

kamaal 10y ago
Humans generally have a way to look for patterns of repeated effort that could be automated, and then proceed to automate them one way or the other. It has nothing to with programming. We are trained through evolution to conserve resources as much as we possibly can. The guy who invented the wheel was the first programmer.

benaadams 10y ago

> The problem that I see is the imprecision of english when it comes to the word "hard". Learning to code is NP-Hard ?

Bombthecat 10y ago
N log hard :)