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Huh as someone who has a career doing both design and engineering I disagree with this take. I think both skills can be learned. I also think that people have

Huh as someone who has a career doing both design and engineering I disagree with this take. I think both skills can be learned. I also think that people have intrinsic talents that make them better or worse at those skills. Put another way, anyone can learn to code but some people will never be great at it while others have a natural talent. Same for design. I’m curious why you think otherwise. What’s the difference in your mind?

chamomeal 7mo ago
I’m kinda getting off topic here but anecdotally: I’ve tried to get so many of my friends to learn programming. I love it, and I think a lot of em would love it too. But they hit a hard wall with the patience needed to self learn. Like the moment something doesn’t happen like the tutorial said (error message saying “idk what python is, you mean python3?”), they just give up completely instead of googling it. I really feel like the venn diagram of “people who can code” and “people who can google errors they don’t understand for a couple hours” is nearly a perfect circle. LLMs can smooth out those little tediums, so maybe more people really will be able to learn programming now. But then again if you don’t have the patience to trudge through the annoying parts, will you have the patience to be confused and struggle, instead of letting Claude do the hard stuff for you? I’ll be interested to see what future self-taught devs look like!
- an_guy 7mo ago
  What I have observed is, if you don't know what the issue is, llm would usually suggest something that is unnecessarily complex and not ideal. It might work but the moment something fails, llm suggest hacks instead of solution.
- thunky 7mo ago
  Your friends struggle with learning programming because they don't care enough about learning it. You're the only one that cares. Same can be said for any skill. Threads like this bother me a bit because it makes programmers seem so smug, like they are this gifted class that is able to wizard the machine where mere mortals cannot. Its intellectual elitism.
  - threethirtytwo 7mo ago
    Regardless of that. I do think it's true that not anyone can learn it. But the "elitism" is becoming something that is less and less relevant because people are less needing to learn it anymore thanks AI.
  - chamomeal 7mo ago
    > intellectual elitism I was trying to say the opposite!! Googling errors for hours is NOT in intellectually demanding task. It’s tedious.
alemanek 7mo ago
Hard agree here. I think the best predictor of whether someone will be good, eventually, at something is “do they love it”. If they do then chances are they will spend lots of focused time practicing and actively seeking out ways to get better. Maybe that love, or at least liking something, comes from inherent talent to some degree but all the talent in the world won’t help you if you don’t put in the time.
menaerus 7mo ago
Maybe you can learn to be mediocre or good enough designer or similarly good enough or mediocre engineer. But I don't think you can actually learn to be a great designer or great engineer - it just takes a different set of skills and evolutionary and genetic material which isn't available to all the people. Some people are simply not good enough in logical and abstract reasoning, math, and similar range of skills which are essential for becoming a good engineer. Similarly someone who is a good engineer doesn't and likely can't have skills required to become a good designer, it just takes a brain which is hardwired and developed differently.
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  As someone who considers themselves a good engineer and a good designer (and does both professionally) I hope that last bit isn’t true
  - menaerus 7mo ago
    Sure, this is why I said likely. If you are good in both then I believe this isn't something commonly found in people.
    - threethirtytwo 7mo ago
      Hard disagree. Design is easy and trivial. Thinking it's hard is a sort of mass delusion. Engineering is the hard thing.
threethirtytwo 7mo ago
Easy. I met people who tried really hard to learn how to code and failed. Design on the other hand especially modern design is easy. It's just text placement, geometric shapes and proper colors that synergize. This isn't like anatomical drawings or oil paintings. It's not just easy, it's obviously easy. What needs to be learned is how to use the tools and do it with speed which does take time and training, but again this is not rocket science, a lot of what looks "good" and "modern" is intuitive and obvious. And modern design is just easy to draw. I mean look at hacker news. It's pretty clean. I like the aesthetic. I bet a "designer" didn't even touch it.
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  This shows a deep misunderstanding of what design is. What you’ve described is “visual design” which is a subset of the design field. There are many sub-specialties, but at its core design is about problem-solving, communication, and empathy. There are a lot of bad designers who are great at making things pretty. A good designer spends more time researching, understanding the problem space, interviewing users, brainstorming, etc., than pushing pixels around.
  - threethirtytwo 7mo ago
    The context of this thread is visual design for websites. Not design for off topic bullshit like furniture. Also I agree with a lot of what you said. The only difference is I feel anyone can do it. The qualities you attributed to a good designer are trivial to learn. Make no mistake it takes time and effort to do these things and many companies neeed a specialized role where someone is only doing this thing… But anyone can do it and learn it. And not anyone can learn how to program.
  - KellyCriterion 7mo ago
    OP is right! Most designers see themself above others because they are somehow good in putting different elements together and say: This is great. And for whatever reason, even the most worst youngster designers consider themself to be gurus, like everybody who learnt coding yesterday wouldnt say "Im John Carmack". Designers are a special type of people

chamomeal 7mo ago

I’m kinda getting off topic here but anecdotally: I’ve tried to get so many of my friends to learn programming. I love it, and I think a lot of em would love it too. But they hit a hard wall with the patience needed to self learn. Like the moment something doesn’t happen like the tutorial said (error message saying “idk what python is, you mean python3?”), they just give up completely instead of googling it. I really feel like the venn diagram of “people who can code” and “people who can google errors they don’t understand for a couple hours” is nearly a perfect circle. LLMs can smooth out those little tediums, so maybe more people really will be able to learn programming now. But then again if you don’t have the patience to trudge through the annoying parts, will you have the patience to be confused and struggle, instead of letting Claude do the hard stuff for you? I’ll be interested to see what future self-taught devs look like!

an_guy 7mo ago
What I have observed is, if you don't know what the issue is, llm would usually suggest something that is unnecessarily complex and not ideal. It might work but the moment something fails, llm suggest hacks instead of solution.
thunky 7mo ago
Your friends struggle with learning programming because they don't care enough about learning it. You're the only one that cares. Same can be said for any skill. Threads like this bother me a bit because it makes programmers seem so smug, like they are this gifted class that is able to wizard the machine where mere mortals cannot. Its intellectual elitism.
- threethirtytwo 7mo ago
  Regardless of that. I do think it's true that not anyone can learn it. But the "elitism" is becoming something that is less and less relevant because people are less needing to learn it anymore thanks AI.
- chamomeal 7mo ago
  > intellectual elitism I was trying to say the opposite!! Googling errors for hours is NOT in intellectually demanding task. It’s tedious.

alemanek 7mo ago

Hard agree here. I think the best predictor of whether someone will be good, eventually, at something is “do they love it”. If they do then chances are they will spend lots of focused time practicing and actively seeking out ways to get better. Maybe that love, or at least liking something, comes from inherent talent to some degree but all the talent in the world won’t help you if you don’t put in the time.

menaerus 7mo ago

Maybe you can learn to be mediocre or good enough designer or similarly good enough or mediocre engineer. But I don't think you can actually learn to be a great designer or great engineer - it just takes a different set of skills and evolutionary and genetic material which isn't available to all the people. Some people are simply not good enough in logical and abstract reasoning, math, and similar range of skills which are essential for becoming a good engineer. Similarly someone who is a good engineer doesn't and likely can't have skills required to become a good designer, it just takes a brain which is hardwired and developed differently.

paulhebert 7mo ago
As someone who considers themselves a good engineer and a good designer (and does both professionally) I hope that last bit isn’t true
- menaerus 7mo ago
  Sure, this is why I said likely. If you are good in both then I believe this isn't something commonly found in people.
  - threethirtytwo 7mo ago
    Hard disagree. Design is easy and trivial. Thinking it's hard is a sort of mass delusion. Engineering is the hard thing.

threethirtytwo 7mo ago

Easy. I met people who tried really hard to learn how to code and failed. Design on the other hand especially modern design is easy. It's just text placement, geometric shapes and proper colors that synergize. This isn't like anatomical drawings or oil paintings. It's not just easy, it's obviously easy. What needs to be learned is how to use the tools and do it with speed which does take time and training, but again this is not rocket science, a lot of what looks "good" and "modern" is intuitive and obvious. And modern design is just easy to draw. I mean look at hacker news. It's pretty clean. I like the aesthetic. I bet a "designer" didn't even touch it.

paulhebert 7mo ago
This shows a deep misunderstanding of what design is. What you’ve described is “visual design” which is a subset of the design field. There are many sub-specialties, but at its core design is about problem-solving, communication, and empathy. There are a lot of bad designers who are great at making things pretty. A good designer spends more time researching, understanding the problem space, interviewing users, brainstorming, etc., than pushing pixels around.
- threethirtytwo 7mo ago
  The context of this thread is visual design for websites. Not design for off topic bullshit like furniture. Also I agree with a lot of what you said. The only difference is I feel anyone can do it. The qualities you attributed to a good designer are trivial to learn. Make no mistake it takes time and effort to do these things and many companies neeed a specialized role where someone is only doing this thing… But anyone can do it and learn it. And not anyone can learn how to program.
- KellyCriterion 7mo ago
  OP is right! Most designers see themself above others because they are somehow good in putting different elements together and say: This is great. And for whatever reason, even the most worst youngster designers consider themself to be gurus, like everybody who learnt coding yesterday wouldnt say "Im John Carmack". Designers are a special type of people