4 ms·
I don't believe for a second it requires "natural aptitude" to program. The problem is any programming curriculum starts with a text editor open. If a develope
by zanny 8y ago
I don't believe for a second it requires "natural aptitude" to program. The problem is any programming curriculum starts with a text editor open.
If a developer-to-be doesn't understand the framing context of what they are doing they are being dropped in a lake with no sense of direction.
Its why all the "naturals" started as geeks who played with computers from a young age. You learned about the environment you would end up working in and later on when you hit the grindstone and actually started creating gears to stick on that machine you had an idea what the result should look like and knew the tools in the shop when you set out to start building it. Even if you didn't know the steps involved in the process, you were familiar with the environment.
People who haven't spent time engrossed in computers, such as the myriads of youth entering a cs 101 class thinking its an easy career when the most exposure to tech they have had is maybe updating their phone and using apps for Facebook and Twitter and maybe owned a video game console with no tinkerability as a total black box drop out so fast. Their professors lead them to an anvil and tell them to forge a steel rod without any wink of an idea what a hammer is.
Its just not an answer anyone wants to hear, because the solution is only to have what amounts to an entire degrees worth of learning to predicate the actual study of programming. But you don't want your brain surgeon to go to medical school after having never studied high school biology or even more generally learned to read.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoWe convinced our parents to buy a computer because it would help our education when all we really wanted one for was playing computer games. Joke was on us though, because playing computer games at the time usually involved a lot of putzing around and figuring out how stuff worked, ultimately teaching us marketable skills.
- bitwize 8y agoI had zero games for my VIC-20. It was strictly a BASIC machine. (Later I had a TI-99/4A which had a few.) My dad is a kind of super-polymath, and in the early 80s he bought a computer and learned how to use and program it so he could grind out solutions to mechanical-engineering equations. He saw me become hooked on BASIC and went down to Crazy Eddie's to pick up the VIC for me so I wouldn't bother him on his rather expensive machine. The personal computer grew up alongside us xennials, and some of us were just drawn to it, even without the promise of video games.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoTotally true. In my case it was a natural progression: "videogames are great!" -> "I have an idea for even better videogame!" -> "how do I make one?" -> "can I tweak this one into being a bit more the way I like it?" -> tinkering around data files -> "I really want to make my own game" -> picking up a programming book at 13 -> a programming career.
- zanny 8y ago22 -> make crud Java apps at a corporate software farm for a decade and lose faith in humanity
- bitwize 8y agoSpend a few years putting in 100-hour weeks writing collision detection for this year's Dora the Explorer game -- a typical game industry position -- and you will be thankful for the crud Java app job.
- meko 8y agoI'm envious because my parents heavily restricted my computer use thinking it'd rot my brain or I'd get r*ped. They wanted me reading books, to become a lawyer or a doctor. I always had an affinity for technology. My folks meant well but I think not watering that seed has me in the middle of this lost life.
- selestify 8y agoIf it makes you feel any better, even many of those who had that seed watered still feel lost in life :)
- chongli 8y agoI'm envious of you. I had no restrictions on technology use, growing up. I dropped out of high school at 16 and spent the next 15 years doing very little of note (with video games consuming the bulk of that time). Now I'm 35, struggling through my undergrad, and surrounded by kids. I have some ideas about where to go from here but it's not going to be easy. The search for real meaning and really meaningful relationships is ongoing.
- apostacy 8y agoI spent so many years yearning. It was so unfair that all of the other kids had Pentium computers at home, and all I had was an old 386. My parent's refused to get me a game console, or cable tv. I was SO BORED, in my desperation, I tried making games in QuickBASIC. I still think my parent's should not have gone so Amish, but I also don't think I would have developed as a programmer without that.
- bitwize 8y agoNot having access to a powerful computer makes you appreciate the finer things in life, like hand-bumming instructions till your inner loop hits a hard deadline.