4 ms·

I don't really get this blog post. Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? He doesn't need professionally taught courses, just a couple of boo

by satysin 10y ago

I don't really get this blog post. Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? He doesn't need professionally taught courses, just a couple of books from Amazon and he would be able to get some projects up on Github to pad his resume. I can appreciate finding the time to do this while working shifts as a bus driver would be hard but why didn't he do this before it got to that situation? Sorry if I come across as rude/uncaring but I have seen people working 2 jobs and still be able to self-learn web development with no programming background/education. I don't understand why his father couldn't have helped himself a bit more during his career.

ergothus 10y ago
I have a very similar reaction. I _can_ say that when I worked in (state) govt, I encountered this mentality that nothing could be released without "training" everyone. From this, I guess one of two conclusions are true: * There exists a myth that people cannot learn without training that some people have bought into. OR * There is a collection of people that are (currently) not effective learners without a teacher I can have some sympathy for the latter - I definitely learn faster when I can ask questions and understand best practices earlier - but I'm uncertain if anyone that just doesn't learn well without instruction are doing so because they never learned how to learn, or if it's something fundamental, like some people prefer to listen to music while working and others can't stand it.
- phil21 10y ago
  It's much more fundamental than that. I think a lot of folks who tend to frequent sites like HN truly live in an echo chamber - a good one, but still a bubble. I think it's difficult for many here to imagine that "learning stuff" just isn't fun for most folks. When I was a kid my idea of having a fun night was staying up late reading the encyclopedia under the covers. Most people hear that and find it absolutely absurd - as if I was torturing myself since they cannot imagine doing something like that for fun. The simple fact is most humans do not enjoy learning for the sake of learning. They are in no way self-directed whatsoever, and expecting anything resembling even a large minority of the population to exhibit such traits will leave you hating humanity. It has taken me many years to come to terms with that conclusion. Most folks are simply mentally lazy - or being charitable the modern world does not trigger whatever their interests are and motivate them. I've struggled with how to explain to my "less successful" friends what this means, with little success. It means showing up on time for your 9-5 job and working hard at it is the absolute minimal bar for success. Most people do not understand that fact, and vehemently disagree with it as a universal truth of life. But it is. The folks who are consistently successful in life are the ones hustling 24x7 - where most of their effort is in learning and furthering their career prospects - not just toil for someone else at a salaried job. They are successful largely due to the fact others simply don't put in the effort they do.
  - smnplk 10y ago
    I think you are correlating success in life (whatever that is) with drive to learn. There are people who could be seen as very unsuccessful in life, but are active learners.
  - ergothus 10y ago
    I can't say that your summary matches my life - I've been pretty lazy, but having just enough work ethic about certain things and a drive to learn and a crapton of dumb luck has seen me "successful". I have friends at various points along the financial success/security path, and I only see strong correlation between working hard and success at the very low end. > It means showing up on time for your 9-5 job and working hard at it is the absolute minimal bar for success I've violated your absolute minimum - I'm not saying you can and should slack off all the time, but at the same time slavish devotion to fulfilling a 1950s viewpoint doesn't actually get you that far either. > The simple fact is most humans do not enjoy learning for the sake of learning. Probably and sadly true. I _suspect_ that it's because we (society) do a terrible job of TEACHING learning, so only those with the right parents/friends/genetic happenstance learn it. But that' is an unproven suspicion. It might also be a fundamental truth of the current state of human evolution. ( I have a theory that brain usage is "expensive" calorie-wise, and we've evolved to minimize the actual exercise of our brains. My theory gets a little support when they find that starvation/crisis spurs more energy directed to the brain, but I've not seen anything that has actually studied my theory. On the gripping hand, I've not really tried to check either, because that seems like work. [joke]).
- ams6110 10y ago
  Training is a huge industry especially for enterprise and government organizations. Every RFP will include a significant training component and it's a huge fraction of spending in government and enterprise IT. Maybe it's because most enterprise/government software sucks so bad it's impossible to use without significant training. Sidebar: Back in the first dot-com boom, the CTO of the company I worked for (who was an idiot in most respects) had one gem that I still remember: if users need training to use our website, we have failed. Whatever the case, if you've only worked in enterprise IT, it may not really occur to you that software and programming is something you can learn on your own without training. I am thankful that my computer science curriculum was never specifically about languages. The language used for a class, whether it was C, Scheme, assembler, or whatever was "an excercise left to the student." That helped me learn that learning any language was just a matter of using it, with the aid of a couple of good books.
slowmovintarget 10y ago
It's why he cited his father's poor decision as a cautionary tale. He contrasts that with his own decision and recommendation: "don't be like my dad". I find it odd that so many posts here take the tack "why couldn't he just" when the article is pointing out "he should've, but didn't."
- ChristianGeek 10y ago
  It's a series of poor decisions, starting with the decision to stick with what he knew was a dying language because he thought the talent pool would be smaller and therefore demand higher. Don't get me wrong; I've made plenty of bad decisions and judgment calls in my life and it's only by the grace of God and sheer tenacity that I've been able to recover from each of them. OP's tale just goes to show how quickly things can change if you're not careful. TL; DR: This is an industry where you can't afford to sit still. Be a shark.
onion2k 10y ago
Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? Presumably a belief that he would fail so the effort would a waste. The same belief stops me ditching coding to become a hedgefund manager; rightly or wrongly I assume I'll fail, so I don't try. Don't assume everyone is entirely rational all the time.
adamredwoods 10y ago
I thought in the article the father did attempt to go to a program to learn something new. Anyhow, demands of family and health can take a lot of free time away. You need kids to understand this, hopefully some of you do.
laughfactory 10y ago
Yeah, it's hard to understand when I, who am not even as multilingual as other programmers, code in... R, Python, Java, Apex, VB, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, and that's just my recent experience. Further back it was C and Pascal. In a lot of ways I just don't "get" how one could only ever learn/know ONE language. Though I'm biased (I work there), I'd recommend Dad check out Pluralsight for quality affordable CS education.
- dasil003 10y ago
  Imagine that 40 years ago you joined a Fortune 500 company as a junior developer writing COBOL. There's a good likelihood that your entire environment was decided by some 8-figure enterprise sales process; your OS and tooling were vendor provided and custom set up by your own internal IT team; deploying software was something that was done by a team that only saw your code after a rigid human QA process; you never even saw a PC or hobbyist computer until the time when you already had 2 or 3 kids with little spare time. Granted there are a lot of assumptions there, but I don't think it's too hard to imagine how someone could spend a career sheltered from the current GitHub-driven development world and be completely overwhelmed.
flukus 10y ago
> Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? After a while people forget how to learn. Once the neural plasticity is gone it's not just picking up a new language.
touristtam 10y ago
> Sorry if I come across as rude/uncaring but I have seen people working 2 jobs and still be able to self-learn web development with no programming background/education. I don't understand why his father couldn't have helped himself a bit more during his career. Plenty of reasons could have lead to this, and citing anecdotal experience of people that manage extra ordinaire feat shouldn't set a standard for everyone.

by satysin 10y ago

ergothus 10y ago

I have a very similar reaction. I _can_ say that when I worked in (state) govt, I encountered this mentality that nothing could be released without "training" everyone. From this, I guess one of two conclusions are true: * There exists a myth that people cannot learn without training that some people have bought into. OR * There is a collection of people that are (currently) not effective learners without a teacher I can have some sympathy for the latter - I definitely learn faster when I can ask questions and understand best practices earlier - but I'm uncertain if anyone that just doesn't learn well without instruction are doing so because they never learned how to learn, or if it's something fundamental, like some people prefer to listen to music while working and others can't stand it.

phil21 10y ago
It's much more fundamental than that. I think a lot of folks who tend to frequent sites like HN truly live in an echo chamber - a good one, but still a bubble. I think it's difficult for many here to imagine that "learning stuff" just isn't fun for most folks. When I was a kid my idea of having a fun night was staying up late reading the encyclopedia under the covers. Most people hear that and find it absolutely absurd - as if I was torturing myself since they cannot imagine doing something like that for fun. The simple fact is most humans do not enjoy learning for the sake of learning. They are in no way self-directed whatsoever, and expecting anything resembling even a large minority of the population to exhibit such traits will leave you hating humanity. It has taken me many years to come to terms with that conclusion. Most folks are simply mentally lazy - or being charitable the modern world does not trigger whatever their interests are and motivate them. I've struggled with how to explain to my "less successful" friends what this means, with little success. It means showing up on time for your 9-5 job and working hard at it is the absolute minimal bar for success. Most people do not understand that fact, and vehemently disagree with it as a universal truth of life. But it is. The folks who are consistently successful in life are the ones hustling 24x7 - where most of their effort is in learning and furthering their career prospects - not just toil for someone else at a salaried job. They are successful largely due to the fact others simply don't put in the effort they do.
- smnplk 10y ago
  I think you are correlating success in life (whatever that is) with drive to learn. There are people who could be seen as very unsuccessful in life, but are active learners.
- ergothus 10y ago
  I can't say that your summary matches my life - I've been pretty lazy, but having just enough work ethic about certain things and a drive to learn and a crapton of dumb luck has seen me "successful". I have friends at various points along the financial success/security path, and I only see strong correlation between working hard and success at the very low end. > It means showing up on time for your 9-5 job and working hard at it is the absolute minimal bar for success I've violated your absolute minimum - I'm not saying you can and should slack off all the time, but at the same time slavish devotion to fulfilling a 1950s viewpoint doesn't actually get you that far either. > The simple fact is most humans do not enjoy learning for the sake of learning. Probably and sadly true. I _suspect_ that it's because we (society) do a terrible job of TEACHING learning, so only those with the right parents/friends/genetic happenstance learn it. But that' is an unproven suspicion. It might also be a fundamental truth of the current state of human evolution. ( I have a theory that brain usage is "expensive" calorie-wise, and we've evolved to minimize the actual exercise of our brains. My theory gets a little support when they find that starvation/crisis spurs more energy directed to the brain, but I've not seen anything that has actually studied my theory. On the gripping hand, I've not really tried to check either, because that seems like work. [joke]).
ams6110 10y ago
Training is a huge industry especially for enterprise and government organizations. Every RFP will include a significant training component and it's a huge fraction of spending in government and enterprise IT. Maybe it's because most enterprise/government software sucks so bad it's impossible to use without significant training. Sidebar: Back in the first dot-com boom, the CTO of the company I worked for (who was an idiot in most respects) had one gem that I still remember: if users need training to use our website, we have failed. Whatever the case, if you've only worked in enterprise IT, it may not really occur to you that software and programming is something you can learn on your own without training. I am thankful that my computer science curriculum was never specifically about languages. The language used for a class, whether it was C, Scheme, assembler, or whatever was "an excercise left to the student." That helped me learn that learning any language was just a matter of using it, with the aid of a couple of good books.

slowmovintarget 10y ago

It's why he cited his father's poor decision as a cautionary tale. He contrasts that with his own decision and recommendation: "don't be like my dad". I find it odd that so many posts here take the tack "why couldn't he just" when the article is pointing out "he should've, but didn't."

ChristianGeek 10y ago
It's a series of poor decisions, starting with the decision to stick with what he knew was a dying language because he thought the talent pool would be smaller and therefore demand higher. Don't get me wrong; I've made plenty of bad decisions and judgment calls in my life and it's only by the grace of God and sheer tenacity that I've been able to recover from each of them. OP's tale just goes to show how quickly things can change if you're not careful. TL; DR: This is an industry where you can't afford to sit still. Be a shark.

onion2k 10y ago

Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? Presumably a belief that he would fail so the effort would a waste. The same belief stops me ditching coding to become a hedgefund manager; rightly or wrongly I assume I'll fail, so I don't try. Don't assume everyone is entirely rational all the time.

adamredwoods 10y ago

I thought in the article the father did attempt to go to a program to learn something new. Anyhow, demands of family and health can take a lot of free time away. You need kids to understand this, hopefully some of you do.

laughfactory 10y ago

Yeah, it's hard to understand when I, who am not even as multilingual as other programmers, code in... R, Python, Java, Apex, VB, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, and that's just my recent experience. Further back it was C and Pascal. In a lot of ways I just don't "get" how one could only ever learn/know ONE language. Though I'm biased (I work there), I'd recommend Dad check out Pluralsight for quality affordable CS education.

dasil003 10y ago
Imagine that 40 years ago you joined a Fortune 500 company as a junior developer writing COBOL. There's a good likelihood that your entire environment was decided by some 8-figure enterprise sales process; your OS and tooling were vendor provided and custom set up by your own internal IT team; deploying software was something that was done by a team that only saw your code after a rigid human QA process; you never even saw a PC or hobbyist computer until the time when you already had 2 or 3 kids with little spare time. Granted there are a lot of assumptions there, but I don't think it's too hard to imagine how someone could spend a career sheltered from the current GitHub-driven development world and be completely overwhelmed.

flukus 10y ago

> Why couldn't his father self-teach some other languages? After a while people forget how to learn. Once the neural plasticity is gone it's not just picking up a new language.

touristtam 10y ago

> Sorry if I come across as rude/uncaring but I have seen people working 2 jobs and still be able to self-learn web development with no programming background/education. I don't understand why his father couldn't have helped himself a bit more during his career. Plenty of reasons could have lead to this, and citing anecdotal experience of people that manage extra ordinaire feat shouldn't set a standard for everyone.