3 ms·

I don't understand this attitude. Would you feel the same way if someone put up an ad saying "learn to drive in 3 months"? A couple of years back I went to one

by oskarth 15y ago

I don't understand this attitude. Would you feel the same way if someone put up an ad saying "learn to drive in 3 months"? A couple of years back I went to one of those "driving camps". It was enough to land me a driver's license in Sweden, which has comparatively high standards. Did I become race driver? No. A professional driver then? No. Do I know all the parts of my engine? No. I can drive my car from point A to B relatively safely and I know how to check the oil, but that's pretty much it. You have to start somewhere. A lot of people aren't getting exposed to programming in a useful way - compared to say, driving, counting, reading and writing - and this is a good way of starting out. What's the problem with that? If you are starting a delivery business, perhaps it would be useful if you delivered the packages yourself rather than hiring a professional truck driver. As for the reason of this being on the front page of HN: One thing to keep in mind is the fact that it, along with a gazillion other articles on the same subject, represents a change in availability of education in our industry. That and link-bait for the Zuckerbergians.

mtrn 15y ago
I can understand the attitude - and your counterexample. I know a few people, who have law or humanities degrees, who can come up with some working Wordpress installation or some web form much more quicker than I could (I've been programming since 12). And I would love to see more people being able to automate their everyday tasks - and more and more people can. But the problem of programming I guess is that the limit is really your mind, and that's a bottomless pit. I'm still learning to develop an instinct for code, a feeling for balance between necessity and clarity. And I don't feel my journey will end sometimes soon.
babarock 15y ago
Because filling the road with half-accomplished drivers is a pain in the derriere. The average driver is already annoyed and tense on the road, I can only imagine professional drivers get very frustrated by poor driving when they're outside the tracks. (On a side note, driving is much more vital than programming, so the analogy stops here. You should have the right to drive, even at a non-professional level. Can the same be said of programming?) Just like less-than-average drivers will annoy the pros, the less-than-average programmer will limit the field. If you look at my original comment, I clearly mentioned: "How to make the real programmer on your team miserable". If the less-than-average programmer sits in his parents basement working on his own racoon-loving social network using the most mind numbing technologies, that's okay. But as soon as he interacts with others, he will inevitably cripple the advances of the field. Think of what happens each time a standard comittee reaches the conclusion: "It's a great idea, but too complex for people to grasp". I know I sound very elitist, and I wish I wasn't. The truth is programming is hard. Very, very hard. Sure you can use your favorite framework to generate an html form and read DB fields, but this is not programming. Dijkstra has written extensively about the subject, calling programming "one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics" or saying about BASIC (whose usage then is very analogous to the subject at hand now) "the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery". EWD was an extremist, he argued that CS students should focus on symbol manipulations, prohibiting them to manipulate computers for the first few years, focusing on an abstract formal language instead. He criticized universities for "[lacking] the courage to teach hard science" and their "infantilization" of the "radically new" idea that is computer science. I won't go as far. If what he suggests is an extreme, a website promising you to learn code in 3 months is the opposite extreme. A 4 year CS degree, a couple of open source projects and the deliberative practice Norvig talked about should be a good moderate middle-ground. In short, do I encourage people to start programming? Of course I do, it's the most fun I've ever had in my life. Do I agree that three months worth of learning and couple of RoR pre-fabricated functions is enough to say they learned how to "code"? Absolutely not.

by oskarth 15y ago

mtrn 15y ago

I can understand the attitude - and your counterexample. I know a few people, who have law or humanities degrees, who can come up with some working Wordpress installation or some web form much more quicker than I could (I've been programming since 12). And I would love to see more people being able to automate their everyday tasks - and more and more people can. But the problem of programming I guess is that the limit is really your mind, and that's a bottomless pit. I'm still learning to develop an instinct for code, a feeling for balance between necessity and clarity. And I don't feel my journey will end sometimes soon.

babarock 15y ago

Because filling the road with half-accomplished drivers is a pain in the derriere. The average driver is already annoyed and tense on the road, I can only imagine professional drivers get very frustrated by poor driving when they're outside the tracks. (On a side note, driving is much more vital than programming, so the analogy stops here. You should have the right to drive, even at a non-professional level. Can the same be said of programming?) Just like less-than-average drivers will annoy the pros, the less-than-average programmer will limit the field. If you look at my original comment, I clearly mentioned: "How to make the real programmer on your team miserable". If the less-than-average programmer sits in his parents basement working on his own racoon-loving social network using the most mind numbing technologies, that's okay. But as soon as he interacts with others, he will inevitably cripple the advances of the field. Think of what happens each time a standard comittee reaches the conclusion: "It's a great idea, but too complex for people to grasp". I know I sound very elitist, and I wish I wasn't. The truth is programming is hard. Very, very hard. Sure you can use your favorite framework to generate an html form and read DB fields, but this is not programming. Dijkstra has written extensively about the subject, calling programming "one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics" or saying about BASIC (whose usage then is very analogous to the subject at hand now) "the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery". EWD was an extremist, he argued that CS students should focus on symbol manipulations, prohibiting them to manipulate computers for the first few years, focusing on an abstract formal language instead. He criticized universities for "[lacking] the courage to teach hard science" and their "infantilization" of the "radically new" idea that is computer science. I won't go as far. If what he suggests is an extreme, a website promising you to learn code in 3 months is the opposite extreme. A 4 year CS degree, a couple of open source projects and the deliberative practice Norvig talked about should be a good moderate middle-ground. In short, do I encourage people to start programming? Of course I do, it's the most fun I've ever had in my life. Do I agree that three months worth of learning and couple of RoR pre-fabricated functions is enough to say they learned how to "code"? Absolutely not.