Hacker News Reader

Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

When people say we need to teach everyone how to code, I agree. But first we need tools that allow (any) people to code with different levels of knowledge and experience.

Like math: you learn basic Math. Then you have a calculator for basic operations. Then you have MS Excel for general professional use. Then you have MatLab/R and stuff for specific use.

For programming I have the impression that you learn to code and then you, from start, have to learn how to use the most sophisticaded tools in place. And several of them.

View on HN

> For programming I have the impression that you learn to code and then you, from start, have to learn how to use the most sophisticaded tools in place. And several of them.

Right; and if someone makes a tool which is (attempts to be) more friendly to use, it's constantly derided by "real" programmers. Look at, for example, Access, Visual Basic, PHP to some extent.

The correct answer to, "people are using Access to write software" shouldn't be:

"that is garbage! They need a real DBMS! With multi-user support!"

It should be:

"well, Access is clearly showing us that there's a huge under served market of people here, let's figure out what it's doing that appeals to them then work on an improved version."

While I agree, it bears mentioning that sometimes the thing that appeals is popularity itself, or good marketing, or "written by Microsoft". It would be a wonderful world if people always chose solutions on technical merits, and the best solution always won, but I don't think we live in that world.

or "It's what I have on my office computer and I don't get admin rights"

We don't need to teach everyone how to code We need to at least make sure everyone understand that there is such a thing as rigor and that it is important.

I doubt rather severely that coding helps with that at all.

Once upon a time, if you trained in computers, you met The Jeremiah who told you "woe betide you who enter here." That was a good thing; you were prepared for the onslaught of unreason surrounding this discipline.

It's kind of like all the recruiters in the movie "Starship Troopers" being maimed.

Then that seems to have stopped.

I find this insightful. It reminds me of what Alan Kay and team are doing with HARC ( https://blog.ycombinator.com/harc ). Seems like people have been working on this problem for ages, but maybe someday we'll solve it ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com