
Ask HN: How did you manage to teach your spouse/partner/half Programming? - tsenkov
How do you get her&#x2F;him interested?<p>I&#x27;ve been trying for years to get my girlfriend interested in programming, because she is a logical person and I am absolutely convinced she would enjoy commanding the computer billions of times a sec (after all she does enjoy doing that to me, so... haha). But so far no success. :(<p>Please share a story and some advice.
======
parzivalm
Why try to get her into it? If she wanted to get into it she would have. It
sounds like you are trying to force her into something that she isn't
interested in. My fiancee is an incredibly intelligent person who I believe
would be an amazing programmer, but her passion is history. I wouldn't all of
a sudden try to "get her into" programming. Your passions do not have to be
her passions.

~~~
thecupisblue
I believe the question was poised to people who's spouses/partners wanted to
learn programming so I'm not sure why this reply even exists except to make
people feel bad.

~~~
parzivalm
I didn't say it to make anyone feel bad. It was just the opposite point of
what the OP had asked. Beside the fact, the question is clearly not directed
in the assumption that their spouse wants to learn programming. It was
directed that OP thinks they would like it so they tried to get them into it.

------
malux85
He liked 3D modelling and creating games, so I taught him C# coding in unity
so that he could do things like trigger animations, light flickering, play
sounds, things like that.

You can code in Javascript or C# in unity, but I chose to teach C# because the
Intellisense/Code Completion in the editor is better.

Also having short concrete goals sped up the effort -> reward cycle, with
thing he actually wanted to do in his games

------
i_feel_great
I got a tester/analyst at work interested in programming and she is now
learning Python. I showed how how to set up test cases, parse files, connect
to the DB, etc to make her job easier. So I think if you can show someone how
it would make their regular job easier, it is more likely to take hold.

~~~
tsenkov
I tried a variation of the same approach - thought my girlfriend how to use MS
Excel formulas and she became better than I am at it in no time, because she
managed to apply it in her job. But how to get her to code still eludes me...

~~~
brudgers
Excel is programming. Congratulations!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

------
Jtsummers
I tried to teach an ex how to use Excel effectively. I made a few spreadsheets
to help her with grading and such. But it never stuck (she is mathphobic).

My current girlfriend already understands Excel pretty well, I've helped her
use some more advanced features from it for work tasks. I've asked if she
wanted to learn how to program, she said no. I'm a nerd, programming and math
are a too large percentage of my thoughts most days so she hears me talking
about it anyways. She's picked up on some things, but she'll probably never be
a programmer (which is fine, she's better off in her current career from a
personal-satisfaction perspective).

~~~
tsenkov
Yes! Excel was what I thought would be the foothold. I imagined it will be
like a gateway grug, haha. She picked it so quick. But nothing past that,
unfortunately.

------
stevekemp
My wife had completed a computer science degree before we ever met - although
she changed career entirely and is now a (medical) doctor.

I don't try to teach her anything, nor have I tried to teach any previous
partner. If people are interested they'll ask, if not I thinking trying to
force knowledge upon them would be misplaced and unwelcome.

Reading the replies here I can see that it doesn't seem to end well most of
the time. People are different, have different interests, and different
tastes.

(Now I wonder what partners have tried to teach you, that you've rejected?)

------
erroneousfunk
My husband is also very smart and logical, likes math, builds computers for
gaming, but he has absolutely no interest in programming at all. We've been
together for 6 years, I've brought it up a few times, showed him some things,
but he's like "Okay, that's nice. Sorry, just not my thing" And that's fine.

He's a social worker who runs a group home for intellectually disabled adults,
and he's been in this career for 15 years now, and he loves it. There's
absolutely no reason for him to get into programming, and he's had enough
opportunities over the years that if he were drawn to it he would have already
done it.

He's certainly supportive of my work, he brags to his friends about cool
things I've done, he knows enough to talk about what I do, but as far as
actually doing it himself, he just doesn't care. I think you need to be okay
with your girlfriend not being a programmer. I mean, do you feel a drive to
pick up _her_ career as a hobby? :-p

------
skylark
First, make it fun. Teach through examples and explain stuff later. As
interest grows, the desire to figure out the "why" also increases.

For most people, "fun" is building something you can play with. Web
development falls nicely into this category - even now I'd still recommend
learning Ruby and then Ruby on Rails for a first language/framework. Ruby is a
beautiful language and RoR lets a beginner make working prototypes without
overwhelming them.

Others might enjoy parsing large sets of data, making games, or other things.
Figure out what they enjoy and the rest will follow.

------
allwein
Does she play video games? Download a copy of Human Resource Machine and have
her play it. It's basically assembly programming on a Harvard Architecture
computer with Single Accumulator.

~~~
tsenkov
Nice!

------
dekec
I tryed...but...I failed :-)

~~~
mommythrowaway
I catched your joke :)

