3 ms·
Do you have any insight into why so many "can't program their way out of a paper bag"? Does this go beyond the observation of a bimodal distribution of programm
by gkuan 13y ago
Do you have any insight into why so many "can't program their way out of a paper bag"? Does this go beyond the observation of a bimodal distribution of programming ability and the discouraging results of the McCracken Group research (from the early 2000s on the international inability of CS1 and CS2 students to implement an RPN calculator)? I am seriously curious about this question. If anyone has some insight, please contact me.
- hga 13y agoNot particularly. I can reframe the issue by pointing out that programming is hard, and it's something we've only recently been seriously doing. I analogize it to reading and writing as "we haven't even found the phonetic alphabet" (or at least agreed that Lisp is that :-). Going further, that means a lot of aspiring programmers have no chance whatsoever of being good programmers, and a lot just fake it. Going back to the writing analogy, perhaps they write prose good enough for an online comment, but they'll never write a competent novel or serious nonfiction book that a publisher might accept. But still, they view themselves as programmers, and too many outfits don't check to see if they can really program before making a job offer, and often for some time afterwords. Or they otherwise manage to hold onto positions, at least for a while.