
Coding is a Privilege - impostervt
https://medium.com/@alishalisha/coding-is-a-privilege-5a592e7d94d7
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venomsnake
I self learned to code at 12 on pentium 100 Mghz with 8 megs of RAM. Without
internet. And when I had it was on 33.6 Kbps dial-up modem. While living in
impoverished family in Eastern Europe. Oh the privilege. As did all of my IT
peers.

Coding is NOT a privilege.

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dudul
Why should "the path to becoming an engineer should be wide open and
accessible for everyone — particularly young people — regardless of their
background, what their parents do, or how much money they have" and not the
path to becoming a lawyer, a nurse, a doctor, an architect?

I understand that HN is an echo chamber for developers and software people,
but enough with this "everyone should learn to code" BS.

Everyone sells coding skills as a way to get more money and more freedom, but
don't you understand that if everyone knows how to code the opposite will
happen? Don't you see that companies push this crap down everyone throat to
make sure they have access to a large pool of talent and can drive salaries
down? Who keeps asking for "coding classes" for toddler? Who keeps pushing to
raise the limit on H1B visas? Who finance coding bootcamps?

We need talent and smart people in _all_ fields, not just software.

~~~
consz
Agreed. I actually _do_ believe that it's a pretty easy field to get into (I
started learning freshman year of college having never coded before, and
picked it up well enough by graduation to be successful in HFT) -- but there's
no way in hell I'd want to give the impression to the general population that
this is an easy discipline and everyone should flood in.

