6 ms·

The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citin

The amount of negativity in this thread is depressing. I think a lot of people either didn't read the article or just skimmed it. For those of you who are citing Peter Norvig's essay, I also thought of the essay when I read this; it's one of my favorites. I've read it several times because it is humbling and inspires me to rise to the challenge of really becoming a great programmer. If Matt reads it he might feel similarly (if he hasn't already). But do you really think Norvig would suggest that someone at his level is not a programmer? By my count, he's done about half the things on Norvig's list already and could be within a tenth of the fabled 10,000 hours (12 wks * 7 days * 8-16 hrs = just over 1000 hrs). I agree that the title might have been misleading given how much prior experience he had, but seriously, this is one of those "if you don't have anything nice to say" moments. If he received that many emails from some random comment on HN that means there are a lot of people reading this thread right now who are in the same boat as he was and as the people asking for help are. What kind of community are we (I mean we as programmers and we as HN) if we denigrate Matt's efforts and these kinds of blogposts? There are going to be more and more programmers in the world as the pace of computing accelerates and people are exposed to gadgets and technologies that excite them enough to peek under the hood. We should be encouraging them and welcoming them and telling them "yes, programming is awesome!"

viscanti 15y ago
My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do differently? What guidelines would he give to someone else in a similar position? How did he find an appropriate mentor? What was he surprised to learn? What can he do now that he couldn't do when he started? There's so many things he could have documented that would have been helpful. He didn't write any of them. Instead, he made the implementation details seem mystical and gives the opinion that "hard work" (whatever that is) is the only key.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  My blog has comments. My email address is in my HN profile. If you wanted more information you could've asked instead of insulting me.
  - cmagahern 15y ago
    I don't think he was trying to be insulting. From what I gather, he was trying to justify the negativity theme in the comments for this post, which was the subject of the original comment. I agree that the blog post was not detailed enough, and didn't talk enough about HOW you became a programmer in 12 weeks.
    - mattdeboard 15y ago
      What kind of information do you mean? I programmed, asked questions, programmed, read source code, and programmed. There's zero magic. I learned in the same way all human beings learn. We're knowledge workers. I gained enough programming knowledge to be a programmer. Where's the confusion?
      - yelsgib 15y ago
        Where's the content?
        bretthoerner 15y ago
        Did you read the article?
      - kristiandupont 15y ago
        Being a programmer myself, this is a bit theoretical but I think if I wasn't and I sat down to read an article names "How I became a Programmer", I would expect a couple of pointers to where to start, what to do and how to do it. Besides from the point about learning a language rather than a framework, your post mostly says "It took me 12 week to learn programming" and that the way to do it is the obvious: read stuff, try stuff etc. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but given the headline, especially here on HN, I can see why some might feel that they didn't quite get their money's worth.
postfuturist 15y ago
Agreed, the condescension is nauseating. It's extremely rude to tell someone who writes software as a day job and who is so enthusiastic about it that he is not a real programmer. Sure, he's closer to the beginning than the end of his journey as a programmer, but so what? He jumped in head-first, and just wanted to share that joy. I have to take a break from HN. Sometimes this community is a real downer.
- ocdprogrammer 15y ago
  Let's be honest and realistic for a moment.There are lots of young and very enthusiastic programmers out there but at the same time there are some older and more cinical ones too.My feeling is that when the older/professional programmers read articles that seem to oversimplify their profession, they feel threatened somehow at a very low level.And personally i can understand them and I feel the same sometimes. I feel that the programmers today are like a big suicidal herd waiting to be exploited by management people.I know that this will sound very awkward in US where the programmers may be at the same time entrepreneurs or self employed but in europe where the entrepreuneurs are crushed easily or have more dificulties, the view might be more conservative.How can I be happy when someone joins the profession, learns overnight some trendy technology and competes with me on some of the fewer and fewer jobs which seem to require less and less depth of knowledge and experience.Why are programmers so naive when all the other professions are restricting their gates through various tactics in order to mantain their advantages ?Again, this may sound extremely cinical and selfish but someone has to say it.Personally i feel myself betrayed by this profession which consumes my best but gives back less and less.Maybe it's just the crisis, maybe its like this only in europe or maybe not.
  - phektus 15y ago
    Don't be. There are still barriers to entry in the profession. Sure one can cook up simple apps and google everything else after just weeks of learning, but if you sit down with somebody for a while you'll know and feel the difference. Which maybe the reason why more and more programmers are becoming entrepreneurs - management and other 'clients' usually have a poor eye on talent (esp. the young ones... you see the theme here), and to really make the most out of your expertise the logical conclusion is to build your own company out of what you know.
mattdeboard 15y ago
Dr. Norvig agrees with you: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3278080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3278080

viscanti 15y ago

My biggest problem with the article is that it's essentially a puff piece about how awesome the writer thinks he is, and how special he is for being able to learn the basics in a short amount of time. The post is entirely too hand-wavy about actual details; telling someone to read some blogs, Q&A sites and code doesn't help anyone. Where is the substance? Were there any interesting ah-ha moments? What would he do differently? What guidelines would he give to someone else in a similar position? How did he find an appropriate mentor? What was he surprised to learn? What can he do now that he couldn't do when he started? There's so many things he could have documented that would have been helpful. He didn't write any of them. Instead, he made the implementation details seem mystical and gives the opinion that "hard work" (whatever that is) is the only key.

mattdeboard 15y ago
My blog has comments. My email address is in my HN profile. If you wanted more information you could've asked instead of insulting me.
- cmagahern 15y ago
  I don't think he was trying to be insulting. From what I gather, he was trying to justify the negativity theme in the comments for this post, which was the subject of the original comment. I agree that the blog post was not detailed enough, and didn't talk enough about HOW you became a programmer in 12 weeks.
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    What kind of information do you mean? I programmed, asked questions, programmed, read source code, and programmed. There's zero magic. I learned in the same way all human beings learn. We're knowledge workers. I gained enough programming knowledge to be a programmer. Where's the confusion?
    - yelsgib 15y ago
      Where's the content?
      - bretthoerner 15y ago
        Did you read the article?
    - kristiandupont 15y ago
      Being a programmer myself, this is a bit theoretical but I think if I wasn't and I sat down to read an article names "How I became a Programmer", I would expect a couple of pointers to where to start, what to do and how to do it. Besides from the point about learning a language rather than a framework, your post mostly says "It took me 12 week to learn programming" and that the way to do it is the obvious: read stuff, try stuff etc. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but given the headline, especially here on HN, I can see why some might feel that they didn't quite get their money's worth.

postfuturist 15y ago

Agreed, the condescension is nauseating. It's extremely rude to tell someone who writes software as a day job and who is so enthusiastic about it that he is not a real programmer. Sure, he's closer to the beginning than the end of his journey as a programmer, but so what? He jumped in head-first, and just wanted to share that joy. I have to take a break from HN. Sometimes this community is a real downer.

ocdprogrammer 15y ago
Let's be honest and realistic for a moment.There are lots of young and very enthusiastic programmers out there but at the same time there are some older and more cinical ones too.My feeling is that when the older/professional programmers read articles that seem to oversimplify their profession, they feel threatened somehow at a very low level.And personally i can understand them and I feel the same sometimes. I feel that the programmers today are like a big suicidal herd waiting to be exploited by management people.I know that this will sound very awkward in US where the programmers may be at the same time entrepreneurs or self employed but in europe where the entrepreuneurs are crushed easily or have more dificulties, the view might be more conservative.How can I be happy when someone joins the profession, learns overnight some trendy technology and competes with me on some of the fewer and fewer jobs which seem to require less and less depth of knowledge and experience.Why are programmers so naive when all the other professions are restricting their gates through various tactics in order to mantain their advantages ?Again, this may sound extremely cinical and selfish but someone has to say it.Personally i feel myself betrayed by this profession which consumes my best but gives back less and less.Maybe it's just the crisis, maybe its like this only in europe or maybe not.
- phektus 15y ago
  Don't be. There are still barriers to entry in the profession. Sure one can cook up simple apps and google everything else after just weeks of learning, but if you sit down with somebody for a while you'll know and feel the difference. Which maybe the reason why more and more programmers are becoming entrepreneurs - management and other 'clients' usually have a poor eye on talent (esp. the young ones... you see the theme here), and to really make the most out of your expertise the logical conclusion is to build your own company out of what you know.

mattdeboard 15y ago

Dr. Norvig agrees with you: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3278080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3278080