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Haha, yeah it's the "just" part that's the issue. In all seriousness I'm actually helping my wife learn to code at the moment. Her last job was as a pharmacy tech, but she hated that job and isn't satisfied with me as the sole breadwinner. She hadn't even touched the command line until a couple of years ago. She's come a long way from zero and is now learning React, but it'll still be at least another year, maybe two before I'd say she's ready to produce something professional-quality on a professional schedule. And that's with me taking care of the bills, funding the educational resources she's using (not a 4-year degree), doing a LOT of tutoring in the first year and and passing along insights I didn't get until my first job. And she's put a minimum of 30 hours a week into it, often more.

I can only imagine what someone with greater responsibilities, less time and no mentoring would go through. Not saying it can't be done, clearly it has. But just because a few talented/lucky/insane people can start from nothing and strike it big doesn't make it accessible to the average coal miner. If it did our salaries would be a low lower.




Yeah, the notion we were just going to make all those folks who work with their hands into web devs was doomed to failure from the get go.




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