
It’s Okay to Not Learn How to Code - exolymph
http://sonyaellenmann.com/2015/12/its-okay-to-not-learn-how-to-code.html
======
nvader
I applaud the author's decision not to invest effort in learning that doesn't
fit her goals. Perhaps one day in our future coding ability will become a
requirement in society, in the same way that literacy did over the course of
history. Or perhaps the ability to code will forever remain a niche
professional skill, like the ability to solve partial differential equations,
or read music. It may even go the way of carving stone tablets. In today's
world coding is not a requirement, and the author should definitely focus on
things she finds fulfilling.

I take particular exception, however, to the reasoning within the article
which says, essentially, "If I were the kind of person who does X, I'd already
be doing X". Substitute for X any skill you yourself picked up later in your
life, and personal experience should show how false this is. Running, Singing,
Public Speaking, dancing the tango at your wedding. We humans are not born
fully formed is all facets of our personality, but we have to earn the shape
of our lives through effort and experience.

~~~
brudgers
"I am not the kind of person who does X" is perfectly valid even though as we
get older it tends to become "I am not the kind of person who does X now."

Sometimes the "now" is "anymore". Sometimes it is "yet". Other times it is
"right now". Our concepts of wisdom overlap a lot with γνῶθι σεαυτόν [know
thyself]. At fifty, though, probably it's a bit of common sense rather than
any sort of wisdom.

------
imh
>Here’s the thing: if I were the type of person who would be good at coding
...

I don't like this sentiment. Programming (at least the basics, no monads here)
is really simple, and the perception that it's difficult seems damaging. What
can we as programmers do about this? I'm almost as dejected hearing people say
programming is hard as hearing "oh I can't do math."

~~~
mrborgen
But there certainly is a difference on how easy people pick up coding. This
has a lot to do with attitude, but also how talented they are. As with all
other skills, you're given a set of cards to play with.

But then again, practice beats talent any day of the week.

------
IsaacL
"Sure, programming languages are cool and useful, but so is geometry, and I
don’t spend my free time on that either."

:D - I'm spending this sunday afternoon learning abut geodesic grids
([https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Geodesic_Grids](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Geodesic_Grids))
as part of a project to teach myself d3.js.

Otherwise - I agree with the author. It was strange seeing programming become
a huge thing about 2/3 years ago, but realistically, most people don't have
the mathematical/logical abilities to ever get really productive. Which is
fine, they should focus on what they're good at, rather than beat themselves
up for not mastering a quite specialised skill.

I gather the growth in coding bootcamps has lowered the demand for junior
devs, but there's still a huge demand for more experienced people.

~~~
TrevorJ
I don't buy into the idea that you need some set of innate talent to be able
to program. Logic and reasoning is a skill, and it can be trained just like
any other.

------
seanwilson
Personally, I think if every manager, marketing person, art designer, UI
designer, web designer etc. spent just a day or two learning to program, it
would give them an order of magnitude improved understanding of what happens
on the coding side and would help them make better decisions. Likewise,
programmers should try to learn a little about the domains of other teammates
to understand each other better.

------
godDLL
Don't. More for the rest of us.

Also, ditch maths, music, drawing, cooking, learning (thats a skill),
accounting, and survival skills.

And that will be the absolute limit of my attention this kind of thinking gets
from me.

Farewell and good luck.

------
tamana
Troll article. The article states that the author already does know basic
coding, which is the idea behind the "everyone should learn to code" movement.

------
lucid00
It is.

But it's not in certain contexts. Like in areas where a basic understanding of
technology apply like on a tech blog or high profile position in politics or
company where you make decisions that steer the tech sector, you'll do best
with some basic programming knowledge.

Nothing serious is needed either, just a few weeks of learning Python and just
read up on the rest of the programming world and you should at least have some
understanding on how everything works.

Because I see more and more people in areas where programming knowledge can
apply say "It's okay to not learn how to code" and people where it doesn't
apply never go out of their way to say that.

Knowing how to code isn't always about getting a great job, sometimes it's
just about making yourself better at your existing one.

~~~
jen729w
Agreed, but in this context "knowing how to code" is not the same as "being
able to code".

I know _how_ to code. I understand it, and can hack at basic programs written
by other people. That doesn't mean _I can code_. That would require years of
practice and, like the author, it's just not my thing. I'm better at other
stuff.

~~~
collyw
You are coding, just likely that you aren't doing it "well". "Doing it well"
is very subjective and depends a lot on the context.

------
RyanZAG
It's okay not to learn how to cook too. Not everyone is going to be a world
class chef, but learning to cook is still worth doing if you don't want to
always have to ask or pay others to cook for you.

People who can't cook still get through life without that much trouble though.

~~~
autotune
Pre-made meals exist as well that can be reasonably healthy if you search hard
enough as well as things like Soylent, which is specifically made for people
who don't want to cook ever again. You won't of course get the fun out of Chef
Watson recipes, but maybe you use that spare time to do other geeky things you
enjoy instead.

------
userbinator
_There’s nothing in particular that I want to build that I can’t already hack
together using basic OSS or otherwise freely available tools._

I think that shows she _does_ know "How to Code" enough to solve the problems
she faces, but isn't interesting in going beyond that; and I agree, that is a
perfectly fine and already far better position than what many others are in.
IMHO society doesn't need more professional programmers (who are just going to
build more things we probably don't need); it needs more people who know
enough about how computers work to be able to control them better and make
them do what they want.

~~~
jaboutboul
Maybe the problem is that we, as the computer scientists of our age need to
make it easier for people who are not coders to build things and make machines
work for them as well? Like you said its about solving problems. In that
respect, coding is like a plier, much like any other tool in the box, except
its one thats (mostly) incomprehensible to a majority of people--and thats
partially our fault.

To scratch my little sunday morning dystopian itch, it makes you think that in
the future what may happen is that society will be further divided into
classes, except it will be the ruling, technical class and the non-technical
class.

Just playing a little devil's advocate cause I'm a bit bored this morning...

------
facepalm
She's right, except that the criterion "browsing Twitter is more fun, and if I
really wanted it I would have learned it long ago" is probably flawed. These
days, everything is an uphill battle against the temptations of the internet
at first. Applying that logic, nobody would ever learn anything anymore.

~~~
Cheyana
No kidding. I spent most of yesterday boning up on basic math skills that I
haven't used in years, and I did that after turning off the computer, with a
short break to watch The IT Crowd on Netflix. Now that my breakfast is done,
I'm getting off again and back to the books in a few minutes. Gotta keep the
old neurons alive. Sitting and passively reading the internet is killing my
brain.

------
kalzium
"I want the high salary a programmer can command in today’s labor market" \-
yeah, guess why that's the case... ;)

~~~
parennoob
Isn't this the case for almost all professions though? Take cosmetologists for
instance. In the town where I live, a person who cuts hair gets about $15 for
about 20 minutes of work. Guaranteed job (because people always have hair that
they want cut or dyed), a flexible work schedule, and more social cachet than
being a stuffy programmer, since they are "hair stylists".

Or consider doctors. $200k+ is a pretty standard salary for a doctor, plus
people look up to them in an almost godlike way. In my state, nurse
practitioners are also allowed to call themselves "Dr. X", so the social
cachet applies to them as well.

Can you imagine the reaction if there were "Everyone should learn to cut
hair!" or "Everyone should learn basic medicine" movements? Then why code?

[Tangent] If anything, I think there should be an "Everyone should learn how
to _cook_ movement" in the US. Might help with the rising obesity and related
complications.

~~~
tamana
Subtract rent and supplies and taxes and downtime from that $60/hr. Being a
non-celebrity "hair stylist" doesn't have much cachet.

Cutting hair is a once a month need, and it is physically very challenging to
cut _your own_ hair. Almost everyone learns how to shave themselves, though,
they don't rely on a pro every week.

------
cbeach
Wow, I've obviously been sharing the wrong kind of content on Hacker News. I
need to start a blog that discusses all the things I'm not interested in
learning.

My next article will be "why I'm not interested in learning knitting". Can't
wait to get to the HN front page!

------
erikpukinskis
Just like it's okay not to learn how to read.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
How is coding an essential life skill?

Most consumer items - including computers - don't have the interfaces you need
for useful beginner-level coding.

Experts can always pull the cover off something and get inside, but consumer
products - including web sites - make that very difficult for non-experts.

~~~
Lewisham
Do some Googling around the idea of "procedural literacy".

Coding _is_ like reading, maths, other sciences, in that while you don't need
to be very good at it, you really do need to know what computers are and are
not capable of and how they solve problems. You need to be able to do this to
do all sorts of things; be a judge in a courtroom and not fall to the CSI
effect, to not worry about "hackers stealing your credit card" over SSL, etc.
etc. It's simply not OK in this day and age to look at a computer like a magic
box.

Everyone should learn to code. Not everyone should be a coder.

~~~
sundaeofshock
Learning how to code is not the same as computer literacy. There are plenty of
people who code for a living who have little understanding of things like
network security.

We work in an very complex field where it is impossible for one person to have
in depth knowledge of all aspects. I offer up all the security vulnerabilities
from companies like Microsoft and Google as evidence of this fact.

Yes, a person should have basic computer literacy; but unless they plan to
code in a regular basis, teaching them to program is a waste of time.

~~~
lubujackson
"Coding" has nothing to do with network security or the intricacies of
programming languages or using computers. At its core it is simply a extension
of logic operations (if...else, loops, recursion, etc.) with variable
manipulation (moving data around). It SHOULD be a fundamentally taught
disciple, NOT because people need to code but because most people should have
enough recognition in their lives to understand when something could or could
not be managed programmatically.

Learning math in school is not something most people use everyday, that is
true. And most people forget all of the formulas they memorize. BUT, if I am
trying to figure out which peanut butter is cheaper per ounce I can do some
simple math to figure it out. If I am trying to figure out the height of a
tree I remember "oh there is some geometry formula for this" and can go look
it up. What we need in the modern era is more people to have that base level
of knowledge so they can say "rather than doing this spreadsheet every month,
can't we just hire a programmer to automate it?" because right now a ton of
repetitive crap work is being done simply because no one knows any better.

~~~
sundaeofshock
What you are talking about is a cost/benefit analysis, which does not require
knowledge of programming.

You are also making an assumption that tasks are not being automated because
business people do not how to write a line of python/ruby/Java/whatever. Maybe
they have limited funds and they are focusing their expenditures in revenue
generating work. Maybe the RoI is far in the future that it does not make
sense. Maybe they need to be able to change formulas on a moment's notice, so
they don't want to be beholden to a developer.

A CEO needs an understanding of their business and a high-level understanding
that computers are capable of automating tasks. If coding skills are needed,
the CEO can hire a CTO in the same way they hire a CFO to provide accounting
skills.

------
Cheyana
It's a win for Sonya, and more opportunity for Kentucky coal miners!

