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I was never told learning to code was hard. I never found it hard. I found it fun. I was introduced in 8th grade by a friend who brought a listing to school of

I was never told learning to code was hard. I never found it hard. I found it fun. I was introduced in 8th grade by a friend who brought a listing to school of a small program he wrote in BASIC and it took off from there. I didn't have all the resources of the internet to help (this was 1980) Like the article mentions there's just a ton to learn. 6 months of Code Academy will help you learn basic stuff, variables, loops, conditionals, maybe even objects and classes but only experience will help you with databases, files, sorting, patterns, threads, memory issues, debugging, big O thinking, cache coherence, performance, etc, etc and all the other stuff. That comes from doing and doing over years and years. Maybe it's something about certain people? I watched a guy with almost zero programming experience go through some tutorials online and then apply for a software engineering position at google. From everything he said he seemed confident he was going to get the job and was going to be very depressed if he didn't. All I could think was "REALLY? You really think 3 months of study makes you a programmer ready for Google?". I didn't say anything. Who am I to step on his dreams. Maybe he'd some how fake his way in. He didn't But it made me wonder why did he believe that that was all he needed in the first place? I think that's actually the more interesting discussion. There's a ton to learn in programming. You can learn some basic stuff quickly and maybe make some lights light up on your arduino art project but why would anyone think 2 to 6 months of study would make them ready for a programming job? Is that a new thing? Where did it come from?

hibikir 12y ago
That's because you, like all of us that learned in the 80s, were very, very lucky. We started in a world where writing good, production code and learning the very simple basics of programming were the same thing. I started with a ZX Spectrum. You could use simple machine code, or simple basic. Libraries? What are those? The one barrier to get good was when you ran out of memory, and had to switch to machine code and learn memory saving techniques, but by then, you were as ready as anyone. I compare it to wha we do today: My code uses libraries, that use libraries, that use libraries. Languages are huge in comparison. Sure, it's easier to do what we used to do 20 years ago, but nobody expects from us what we did then: Even someone that is just learning wants to do more. This is what builds the despair phase of the article. It's a well known issue that both affects how we train new people and how we even manage large pieces of software today, so it's well talked about. For instance, the first talk of JSRemoteConf last night was all about this issue. Hopefully they make the recordings openly available soon.
- jussij 12y ago
  I think a lot of that despair is industry self-inflicted. I've been in the software industry for a long time and I can't remember a time when the industry created as many new buzz words as quickly as it does today. Take something as simple as ASP.Net for example. In just a few years it has gone through these iterations: * Classic * WebForms * MVC * MVVM * Razor Each name change represent nothing much more than a new software design patterns, yet because they have a buzz word attached they become new skill set. Look at something as simple as IOC, which again is just a new software design pattern. Now ever IOC containers has become a buzz word and shows up as a skill requirement on the job description. So here are just a few new IOC container buzz words that you might need to get on your resume: * Autofac * CastleWindsor * EntityFramework * LinFu * Ninject * PicoContainer.NET * Puzzle.NFactory * S2Container.NET * Spring.NET * StructureMap * Unity With so many buzz words things appear complex and overwhelming, but the reality is if you've seen one IOC container you've seen them all and if you haven't seen any, chances are if you are good with software design patterns it won't matter.
  - chipsy 12y ago
    I definitely get the sense that industry has only accelerated its churn rate over time. Just looking at what's happening to Javascript in the past year or two gives me butterflies in my stomach: There is attractive stuff and necessary stuff, and it's only getting harder to tell the two apart. While I wouldn't say that everything about old-school coding is great, it encouraged a first-principles engineering process - checklists, printouts, technical docs, etc. - that is eschewed today in favor of looking up some framework and fumbling your way through to half-understand what's going on and leaning on the toolchain(which you also don't understand) to give you some reassurance that it isn't completely broken. This is discouraging for _everyone_, not just learners.

hibikir 12y ago

That's because you, like all of us that learned in the 80s, were very, very lucky. We started in a world where writing good, production code and learning the very simple basics of programming were the same thing. I started with a ZX Spectrum. You could use simple machine code, or simple basic. Libraries? What are those? The one barrier to get good was when you ran out of memory, and had to switch to machine code and learn memory saving techniques, but by then, you were as ready as anyone. I compare it to wha we do today: My code uses libraries, that use libraries, that use libraries. Languages are huge in comparison. Sure, it's easier to do what we used to do 20 years ago, but nobody expects from us what we did then: Even someone that is just learning wants to do more. This is what builds the despair phase of the article. It's a well known issue that both affects how we train new people and how we even manage large pieces of software today, so it's well talked about. For instance, the first talk of JSRemoteConf last night was all about this issue. Hopefully they make the recordings openly available soon.

jussij 12y ago
I think a lot of that despair is industry self-inflicted. I've been in the software industry for a long time and I can't remember a time when the industry created as many new buzz words as quickly as it does today. Take something as simple as ASP.Net for example. In just a few years it has gone through these iterations: * Classic * WebForms * MVC * MVVM * Razor Each name change represent nothing much more than a new software design patterns, yet because they have a buzz word attached they become new skill set. Look at something as simple as IOC, which again is just a new software design pattern. Now ever IOC containers has become a buzz word and shows up as a skill requirement on the job description. So here are just a few new IOC container buzz words that you might need to get on your resume: * Autofac * CastleWindsor * EntityFramework * LinFu * Ninject * PicoContainer.NET * Puzzle.NFactory * S2Container.NET * Spring.NET * StructureMap * Unity With so many buzz words things appear complex and overwhelming, but the reality is if you've seen one IOC container you've seen them all and if you haven't seen any, chances are if you are good with software design patterns it won't matter.
- chipsy 12y ago
  I definitely get the sense that industry has only accelerated its churn rate over time. Just looking at what's happening to Javascript in the past year or two gives me butterflies in my stomach: There is attractive stuff and necessary stuff, and it's only getting harder to tell the two apart. While I wouldn't say that everything about old-school coding is great, it encouraged a first-principles engineering process - checklists, printouts, technical docs, etc. - that is eschewed today in favor of looking up some framework and fumbling your way through to half-understand what's going on and leaning on the toolchain(which you also don't understand) to give you some reassurance that it isn't completely broken. This is discouraging for _everyone_, not just learners.