
Learn to Code, It’s Harder Than You Think - perakojotgenije
http://mikehadlow.blogspot.rs/2015/12/learn-to-code-its-harder-than-you-think.html
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sonabinu
I coded in high school as part of a class that was offered in school but
didn't enjoy it then. Then our teachers said things like its like math - boys
are better at it than girls. I totally stayed away from coding till a few
years back when I needed to use statistics packages to analyse my data. I had
to write for loops and functions to make my models work on larger datasets. I
learnt to code and was driven by more than 'it's a good career choice'. I know
a doctor who learnt to program in C because his programmer did not understand
the model the doctor was trying to create.

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xixixao
I have to disagree. OP might be right, but before we establish that
conclusion, we have to try these things first:

Teach coding from young age. Are you really surprised that 18 year old CS
undergraduates fail their intro to programming when they have to learn in
11-22weeks what probably took me say 6 years to learn between the age of 11
and 17? I have a CS degree, but I'm also self taught.

We have to acknowledge the vast breadth of the field and split the teaching to
different paths. There is a reason we have chemistry and biology and physics,
although it's all just physics. And we start splitting super early on. The
same is needed for coding.

And I agree with OP that the perception of the field is selecting (self-
selecting), and again we have to change that before we assume that people are
born to be programmers.

Also, they didn't add up the numbers, it's over a half with a CS degree (gotta
count masters).

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perakojotgenije
Well that's exactly the OP's point. Do you need to start learning to be a
surgeon at the age of 11? Or architect? Or electrical engineer?

If you say that you need to start to learn programming at the age of 11 then
you acknowledge that programming is like music or painting or mathematics, the
earlier you start the better you will be but only if you have aptitude for it.
If you don't you'll always be a mediocre musician or painter or mathematician
or programmer

~~~
xixixao
But sergeons have been learning biology, chemistry and physics from early on
(and they have like 10 years of secondary schooling, no one expects them to
know how to cut people after two trimesters), architects have been learning
math and doing arts (arts take time as you say), ees physics, math again. Even
lawyers have been taught how to read and critically assess text from young
age.

I am not sure this is a good argument, to be good at something you always have
to do it for a long time.

There are things like "how to swap the value in two variables", that are
trivial, but we should "teach" them way earlier, it's the way of thinking (and
both functional and imperative is needed to absorb). Plus it will have great
impact on people not following this career, because they will more often
realize that they're doing repetitive tasks which could be automated. We would
have much more pressure on software companies not to produce shitty software
if people were as lazy as us programmers.

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DrScump
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10676206)

