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Lowering barriers of entry to programming considered harmful to career programmers. If you support it without being manager level or above, you are harming your

Lowering barriers of entry to programming considered harmful to career programmers. If you support it without being manager level or above, you are harming yourself.

crispyporkbites 6y ago
That assumes that more programmers doesn’t mean more programmers. I suspect the inverse, the more programmers we have, the more systems they create to program, and the more programmers we need.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Further, the notation is a "tip of the iceberg" issue; the iceberg is semantics, and I suspect anyone who can grasp the semantics well enough to actually build something, can handle the notation (even if there's a notation they could handle better). Which possibly means - the more notation-capable-but-semantics-challenged people are working in the field, the more work for the semantics-capapble people to clean after them.
- siltpotato 6y ago
  But eventually this reaches an equilibrium, or else we'd all be programmers. There is no law stating that more programmers always means more programmers.
higerordermap 6y ago
More genuine concern is lowering bar to entry below a certain level leads to decline of quality. Just like how there is a class of programmers who don't understand simple CS concepts like algorithm complexity and memory allocation and write horribly inefficient code.
jefftk 6y ago
We were lucky to get into programming at a time when barriers to entry were low. How could we justify putting up obstacles for those that come after us?
hvidgaard 6y ago
People able to program reasonably well, are not hindered by learning the syntax. Lowering the barrier is only going to bring in more people who are fundamentally unable to think algorithmically. If you are a manager you do not want those people to work for you, and if you are a programmer those people make you look better. Of all the people I have tutored thus far, if they struggled with a language like Java or C#, trying to program with Scratch was just as hard for them. Taking syntax completely away and making it visual did not make a difference.
andrewjl 6y ago
That's a very simplistic view. Programmers who work on SDKs and developer tools benefit tremendously from lower barriers to entry to programming.

Lowering barriers of entry to programming considered harmful to career programmers. If you support it without being manager level or above, you are harming yourself.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

That assumes that more programmers doesn’t mean more programmers. I suspect the inverse, the more programmers we have, the more systems they create to program, and the more programmers we need.

beagle3 6y ago
Further, the notation is a "tip of the iceberg" issue; the iceberg is semantics, and I suspect anyone who can grasp the semantics well enough to actually build something, can handle the notation (even if there's a notation they could handle better). Which possibly means - the more notation-capable-but-semantics-challenged people are working in the field, the more work for the semantics-capapble people to clean after them.
siltpotato 6y ago
But eventually this reaches an equilibrium, or else we'd all be programmers. There is no law stating that more programmers always means more programmers.

higerordermap 6y ago

More genuine concern is lowering bar to entry below a certain level leads to decline of quality. Just like how there is a class of programmers who don't understand simple CS concepts like algorithm complexity and memory allocation and write horribly inefficient code.

jefftk 6y ago

We were lucky to get into programming at a time when barriers to entry were low. How could we justify putting up obstacles for those that come after us?

hvidgaard 6y ago

People able to program reasonably well, are not hindered by learning the syntax. Lowering the barrier is only going to bring in more people who are fundamentally unable to think algorithmically. If you are a manager you do not want those people to work for you, and if you are a programmer those people make you look better. Of all the people I have tutored thus far, if they struggled with a language like Java or C#, trying to program with Scratch was just as hard for them. Taking syntax completely away and making it visual did not make a difference.

andrewjl 6y ago

That's a very simplistic view. Programmers who work on SDKs and developer tools benefit tremendously from lower barriers to entry to programming.