
Ask HN: Heated discussion about programming went wrong - userdoesntexist
I recently had a conversation with a guy who wrote a few lines of code in his life. We had a heated discussion about programming and it turned out that he sees himself as a programmer who can program and hack everything. I program for many years now, but didn&#x27;t have any words to give him new perspectives on this topic or to show that it&#x27;s not that easy. I don&#x27;t want to prove him wrong but I need an advice about showing such people that there is much more behind it (I think this can be said about many other topics too). How to have a good conversation with such people giving them facts or questions to rethink their current mindset and arouse more interest for it?
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Cheyana
Maybe you should be asking HN why it's so important to you to enlighten him on
that, in lieu of just letting him go on with his delusion. I wouldn't allow a
discussion to get heated with someone who doesn't know what they're talking
about. Wouldn't you rather spend the time coding? :)

------
PaulHoule
See

[https://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-
rise-o...](https://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-
expert-beginner/)

Psychiatrists, salespeople and many other people persons believe that it is
more powerful to ask people questions than tell them something. If you can
draw him out and get him to delineate the territory he thinks he understands
he might start to understand that there is more about it.

