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I don't think you can get most people to be literate in programming. "programming" is to "business logic" like "spelling" is to "writing novels". You don't

I don't think you can get most people to be literate in programming. "programming" is to "business logic" like "spelling" is to "writing novels". You don't get to be a Dostoevsky by being very good at spelling. Being able to tell good stories is much more important than spelling. You don't get everyone to be a good author by providing them with a tape recorder so they don't have to spell. Programmers are very good at thinking in logic. Programmming languages are just a detail in this. Programming is the ability to formulate what the rules should be exactly. Most (business) people are not able to be that precise no matter the tools you provide them.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I find this a very negative view. It sounds very similar to views expressed throughout history saying why the majority of people could not be taught to read write or add up (variously women, girls, poor people, blacks, slaves, Barbarians etc etc. Turns out all we needed was schools and paper
- tuatoru 5y ago
  And today, all we need for universal programming is Microsoft Excel. The grandparent has it backwards, if I understand correctly. "Business logic" is to "programming" as "My first spelling book" is to Dostoevsky. You can write the analog of a memo easily in Excel, or with great effort you could write a sixty page paper, but programmers these days work in teams to produce things that are the writing equivalent of a coherent blend of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the tax records of 18th-century England, and an epic story 100 times the size of The Lord Of The Rings. And we need bigger systems than that.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    I am just checking I understand you. That "everyone" (let's say everyone in a white collar job) can use Excel today is true. And yes it is possible to "program" in excel. But that's in the "small". And I think you are saying that we don't have the programming ecosystem to support large scale development. I think I agree. But we have to raise the floor of programming literacy a lot beyond "white collar excel". But having said all that, I am dubious that we lack the principles of coding to be able to enable massive software projects - I think we lack the organisational (incentives / understanding / will) to do so. We can imagine a mid sized company that is OSS based, avoids proprietary lock in of its data.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I find this a very negative view. It sounds very similar to views expressed throughout history saying why the majority of people could not be taught to read write or add up (variously women, girls, poor people, blacks, slaves, Barbarians etc etc. Turns out all we needed was schools and paper

tuatoru 5y ago
And today, all we need for universal programming is Microsoft Excel. The grandparent has it backwards, if I understand correctly. "Business logic" is to "programming" as "My first spelling book" is to Dostoevsky. You can write the analog of a memo easily in Excel, or with great effort you could write a sixty page paper, but programmers these days work in teams to produce things that are the writing equivalent of a coherent blend of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the tax records of 18th-century England, and an epic story 100 times the size of The Lord Of The Rings. And we need bigger systems than that.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I am just checking I understand you. That "everyone" (let's say everyone in a white collar job) can use Excel today is true. And yes it is possible to "program" in excel. But that's in the "small". And I think you are saying that we don't have the programming ecosystem to support large scale development. I think I agree. But we have to raise the floor of programming literacy a lot beyond "white collar excel". But having said all that, I am dubious that we lack the principles of coding to be able to enable massive software projects - I think we lack the organisational (incentives / understanding / will) to do so. We can imagine a mid sized company that is OSS based, avoids proprietary lock in of its data.