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Why does it take being lucky to learn how to program? Access to a public library w/ a web browser would be enough to learn the client-side of the world. A dona

Why does it take being lucky to learn how to program? Access to a public library w/ a web browser would be enough to learn the client-side of the world. A donated or sub-$200 laptop and a free GitHub account would be enough for almost all the rest of it (save for some top-tier ML or distributed-systems work). Not that I'm suggesting everyone flood to being a programmer, per se, but becoming one has to be amongst the absolute lowest barriers of entry to a decent living that has ever existed short of being born into landed-gentry. It requires no credentials. It requires almost no capital. It's trivially easy to advertise your skills (via engagement in a popular open source project). It's harder and more expensive to become a groundskeeper than it is to become a programmer.

throwanem 10y ago
Yes, all of this is true today. (Most of it, anyway. I strongly doubt that "advertise your skills via open source participation and leverage that into a paying career" scales as well as you seem to suggest. And 'watwut is right about the rest. When did you last use a computer in a public library? It is rarely an environment conducive to study.) None of this was true when I started; perhaps you overlooked my mention of the model of machine on which I did that. But that's beside my point in any case. My point is that that wasn't the only good fortune which mattered - necessary, to be sure, but not sufficient. Had I not in later life happened upon a job with someone who made it possible for me to transition from the second-shift telephone support role for which I'd been hired into what became my first real dev job, and served as an apprenticeship in business besides, I'd be driving that Uber today. Again, my point is not that one or another specific piece of good luck made it possible for me to build the professional life I have. My point is that to do so has required so many pieces of good luck, any one of which going differently would have changed the entire course of affairs, that it is impossible to imagine this approach could scale. It's like flipping a coin ten times in a row fairly, and having it come up heads five times and land on edge the other five. Clearly that can happen, or I'd be driving that Uber right now. But you cannot reasonably expect it, or demand it, or require it, of anyone.
- chillwaves 10y ago
  Let's not forget your point about voting for Trump to "shock" our nation and wanting to drag other folks to hell with you. That's likely where you lost sympathy.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Yours, perhaps. But your erroneous reading of my statements here suggests strongly that I never had it, so that doesn't seem like too much of a loss. Perhaps you'll convince me otherwise.
watwut 10y ago
People who just learned a bit of JavaScript or whatever programming in library wont be able to produce impressive enough contribution to popular open source. They are unlikely to pass technical interview, whiteboard or not, in a company that does them. They literally need company ok with hiring juniors and mentoring them. Ok, it is possible to fake your way to position if you can project passion and throw around buzz words, but that requires hipster cultural adaptation - not rural one. Most likely thou, they will simply learn wrong things. It is perfectly possible to learn by yourself and by reading of internet, but it requires a lot of time on the internet. It wont happen in three months (unless they are highly charismatic ).
- im_down_w_otp 10y ago
  I know several people who got full-time gigs at companies you would definitely have heard of with almost no prior professional software experience based nearly entirely on the fact they went about fixing bugs in commercially supported open source projects. Some hired by the vendor itself. Others hired by people reliant on those projects. Demonstrating initiative, conscientiousness, and acumen are apparently sought after traits. Some in Python, some in Ruby, some in Javascript. What they all had in common is that they'd all been working food or coffee service up to that point, not programming professionally. I'm not entirely sure where the 3 month time limit came from that you added?

throwanem 10y ago

Yes, all of this is true today. (Most of it, anyway. I strongly doubt that "advertise your skills via open source participation and leverage that into a paying career" scales as well as you seem to suggest. And 'watwut is right about the rest. When did you last use a computer in a public library? It is rarely an environment conducive to study.) None of this was true when I started; perhaps you overlooked my mention of the model of machine on which I did that. But that's beside my point in any case. My point is that that wasn't the only good fortune which mattered - necessary, to be sure, but not sufficient. Had I not in later life happened upon a job with someone who made it possible for me to transition from the second-shift telephone support role for which I'd been hired into what became my first real dev job, and served as an apprenticeship in business besides, I'd be driving that Uber today. Again, my point is not that one or another specific piece of good luck made it possible for me to build the professional life I have. My point is that to do so has required so many pieces of good luck, any one of which going differently would have changed the entire course of affairs, that it is impossible to imagine this approach could scale. It's like flipping a coin ten times in a row fairly, and having it come up heads five times and land on edge the other five. Clearly that can happen, or I'd be driving that Uber right now. But you cannot reasonably expect it, or demand it, or require it, of anyone.

chillwaves 10y ago
Let's not forget your point about voting for Trump to "shock" our nation and wanting to drag other folks to hell with you. That's likely where you lost sympathy.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Yours, perhaps. But your erroneous reading of my statements here suggests strongly that I never had it, so that doesn't seem like too much of a loss. Perhaps you'll convince me otherwise.

watwut 10y ago

People who just learned a bit of JavaScript or whatever programming in library wont be able to produce impressive enough contribution to popular open source. They are unlikely to pass technical interview, whiteboard or not, in a company that does them. They literally need company ok with hiring juniors and mentoring them. Ok, it is possible to fake your way to position if you can project passion and throw around buzz words, but that requires hipster cultural adaptation - not rural one. Most likely thou, they will simply learn wrong things. It is perfectly possible to learn by yourself and by reading of internet, but it requires a lot of time on the internet. It wont happen in three months (unless they are highly charismatic ).

im_down_w_otp 10y ago
I know several people who got full-time gigs at companies you would definitely have heard of with almost no prior professional software experience based nearly entirely on the fact they went about fixing bugs in commercially supported open source projects. Some hired by the vendor itself. Others hired by people reliant on those projects. Demonstrating initiative, conscientiousness, and acumen are apparently sought after traits. Some in Python, some in Ruby, some in Javascript. What they all had in common is that they'd all been working food or coffee service up to that point, not programming professionally. I'm not entirely sure where the 3 month time limit came from that you added?