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It's an attitude, and while definitely harder to develop than technical knowledge, it's not innate ability that one cannot acquire later in life. On the other

It's an attitude, and while definitely harder to develop than technical knowledge, it's not innate ability that one cannot acquire later in life. On the other hand, some people never develop this in their whole lives.

Domenic_S 11y ago
But if it does not come (somewhat) naturally, why would you bother to develop it? We get so caught up in the question of "can everyone program" that we forget to ask if everyone should. There's a massive contingency of folks who couldn't care less about breaking down problems into their constituent parts and writing code to solve them. I am a big believer that a person should try many things in varied fields -- math, art, science, music, athletics, and so forth -- and discover what they're 1) naturally gifted in and 2) what they're interested in. Then they should nurture those skills. We would never dream of taking a person who was not gifted at basketball, and also hated it, and push them to try and be in the NBA. We don't encourage tone-deaf singers, who also don't get a kick out of performing, to become touring musicians. In many other fields we acknowledge that a level of talent is necessary, and we also accept that not everyone is born with that talent. Further, we accept that not everyone even cares to HAVE that talent. Yet in programming we further this notion that if you aren't good at programming or don't want to learn, you're not trying hard enough, the fault lies with you - ur doin' it rong! It's the worst kind of narcissism to think that people who can't or won't do this thing we love are simply being defective people.
- taurath 11y ago
  We're not talking about programming per-say - we're talking about being able to teach yourself, without much outside instruction. If you wanted to learn to play the guitar, learn to take good photos with a nice camera, learn how to decorate your house in a tasteful or fashionable, basically anything you don't have any experience or knowledge in, how do you do it? The people who haven't learned how to learn either simply DON'T do it or they use their social group to find someone to teach them or pay somebody. You can get pretty far without being able to teach yourself things, but for some skills especially those you have no idea about you have to be able to research and learn yourself.

Domenic_S 11y ago

But if it does not come (somewhat) naturally, why would you bother to develop it? We get so caught up in the question of "can everyone program" that we forget to ask if everyone should. There's a massive contingency of folks who couldn't care less about breaking down problems into their constituent parts and writing code to solve them. I am a big believer that a person should try many things in varied fields -- math, art, science, music, athletics, and so forth -- and discover what they're 1) naturally gifted in and 2) what they're interested in. Then they should nurture those skills. We would never dream of taking a person who was not gifted at basketball, and also hated it, and push them to try and be in the NBA. We don't encourage tone-deaf singers, who also don't get a kick out of performing, to become touring musicians. In many other fields we acknowledge that a level of talent is necessary, and we also accept that not everyone is born with that talent. Further, we accept that not everyone even cares to HAVE that talent. Yet in programming we further this notion that if you aren't good at programming or don't want to learn, you're not trying hard enough, the fault lies with you - ur doin' it rong! It's the worst kind of narcissism to think that people who can't or won't do this thing we love are simply being defective people.

taurath 11y ago
We're not talking about programming per-say - we're talking about being able to teach yourself, without much outside instruction. If you wanted to learn to play the guitar, learn to take good photos with a nice camera, learn how to decorate your house in a tasteful or fashionable, basically anything you don't have any experience or knowledge in, how do you do it? The people who haven't learned how to learn either simply DON'T do it or they use their social group to find someone to teach them or pay somebody. You can get pretty far without being able to teach yourself things, but for some skills especially those you have no idea about you have to be able to research and learn yourself.