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It’s the problem-solving, not the language part, that requires special aptitude. You might speak a dozen languages but it doesn’t help if you don’t know what to
by Sharlin 8y ago
It’s the problem-solving, not the language part, that requires special aptitude. You might speak a dozen languages but it doesn’t help if you don’t know what to say.
Besides, have you tried to learn a new natural language in adulthood? A bootcamp won’t get you far. And natural languages are really forgiving in comparison because you’re communicating with a human-level intelligence that’s used to inferring meaning from low-bandwidth ambiguous datastream.
- gingabriska 8y agoHow many times you come across a unique problem? Even when I come across a solution on my own, many times I find on stackoverflow or GitHub better designed solutions which address the corner cases which I didn't even think of.
- ConnorLeet 8y agoAre problem solving skills something you are born with? To me the mismatch is that a traditional CS student spends more time practicing problem solving via homework and exam/exam prep.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago> Are problem solving skills something you are born with? Yes, most definitely.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWould it be reasonable to assume people's innate problem solving skills, to the extent they are innate, combined with how their problem solving skills have been guided pedagogically, fit a bell curve? Is it reasonable to assume some people will land on the far lefthand side of certain bell-curve-fitting measurables, or unmeasurables, that lends them to being not particularly well suited for certain kinds of activities?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoI don't know whether it forms a particular curve or what kind. But the fact is only a small proportion of the population has the innate talent for software development. As long as people can practically attract a mate while lacking this sort of abstract reasoning ability, the majority of the population won't have it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThat's an interesting perspective: there's no genetic selection pressure for software development. I've read that people tend to be intimately attracted to people of roughly the same intelligence and socioeconomic background, for whatever definition of intelligence was used. Having said that, some people do turn out to become engineers fabricators artists and build amazing things. You're probably right though, the majority of the population probably don't have it.
- smnplk 8y agoSo much this. There is a trend with these "techie" youtubers giving advice on which programming languages to learn first or which language is the easiest, etc... They are all missing the point of programming.
- 0_gravitas 8y agoWhich is the exact reason why when people ask for a language suggestion to start with/learn, I tell them all the same thing: "Oh sure, go through the CS50 manual on MIPS!" Personally I can't think of a period of study that affected my ability to problem-solve/reason about problems more than my time studying MIPS.