

Programming for the Extremely Intimidated  - shriya
https://medium.com/learn-to-code/10fcde37aae1

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10098
Good article! Especially this advice:

> If you are in high school or college, I would highly recommend using
> free/cheap online resources to get comfortable with programming languages
> and concepts, and then take some Computer Science courses to learn
> fundamentals and formalize your knowledge

However

> For all of the hardcore Web 1.0 programmers who say “Don’t Learn to
> Code”[...]

I'll leave aside the weird "Web 1.0" "hardcore" qualifiers (seriously, what's
up with that?), but note that it links to Norvig's "Teach yourself programming
in 10 years" piece. Why, may I ask? Is Norvig discouraging the reader from
attempting to become a programmer? Of course not. All he's saying is that if
you want to get good at it, you have to put in lots of effort for a long time.
That's how you get good at anything. I mean, take the guitar for example.
Nobody's going to question that it takes daily hours of practice, sweat and
blood (literally, you'll bleed from your fingers) to become a guitarist. So
why does programming have to be any different?

~~~
shriya
haha I didn't really know how to qualify them, I just was making the
distinction that people who were programmers before the 2001 bubble, or
basically "programmers before it was cool", have a different perspective than
startup kids because their work has been on enterprise software. Very
different than making a iOS game or personal resume site (which is what a lot
of people want to do).

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vezzy-fnord
Only a little better than most of the fluff that has been posted on this
topic. This one in particular seems to have a bias towards web development.
Not that web development is wrong, but the article presents a very narrow
path.

Then I found the notion of Java and C++ being "hardcore" to be quite odd. Is
manifest typing considered hardcore these days? C++ is complex, but Java is
the definitive dull enterprise language.

~~~
shriya
Don't you think the "fluff" is helpful to people who have no experience?

I purposely presented a narrow path so that readers are not overwhelmed by
options. It's hard to know where to start with no guidance, so I directed
beginners to the easiest entry point. When I tried taking a class in C++ it
was intimidating to start with something so opaque.

I eliminated "hardcore" haha clearly the word didn't go over well.

