Programming for the Extremely Intimidated

https://medium.com/learn-to-code/10fcde37aae1

by shriya • 13 years ago

1 5 13 years ago

10098• 13 years ago

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?

shriya3• 13 years ago

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).

shriya3• 13 years ago

[updated it]

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

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.

shriya3• 13 years ago

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.

Programming for the Extremely Intimidated

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