Some people can pick up the basics of programming fairly quickly, but I'm not sure most people can. Someone who truly groks software development after only a fe

Some people can pick up the basics of programming fairly quickly, but I'm not sure most people can. Someone who truly groks software development after only a few weeks is probably an outlier. With a basic understanding, some people can start contributing to existing projects, but it's likely that they're going to make a mess, and it's unlikely that they're going to be ready to start designing and building robust systems. It's common for inexperienced developers to have a lot of enthusiasm and pour tons of time and effort into projects that are then hard to maintain. Management often doesn't understand the cost of this in terms of technical debt and maintenance (maybe even thinking they're saving money by paying a junior developer less for the "same" thing). I'm not trying to diminish anyone's aptitude or enthusiasm and I don't think everyone on a team needs to be highly experienced, but I've seen this anyone-can-do-it attitude (from both developers and managers) lead to a lot of pain and unnecessary costs, including opportunity costs.