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Comment by flukus | Hacker News Reader

> Limiting the profession to those who started naturally at a young age is a good way to keep out everyone but rich mostly-white kids with college-educated parents.

~$100 (or less for an old second hand laptop plus a basic internet connection (or the public libraries one) is all that's needed to start programming.

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$100 equals 40 hours of work in a blue-collar job down here in Argentina. It's probably even worse elsewhere.

Maybe there should be a laptop charity page which connects the ones needing old laptops with people having them rotting away in a drawer. Shipping can't be that expensive.

The question is, is there need for something like this?

And if you're coding, you're not training or doing another job. So it is actually much more.

$100 is a lot of money for a lot of people.

A lot of poor people do not have free time to earn it-- they're going to school and using their minimum wage money to eat. I slept on the floor and worked 16 hour days to be able to get my education.

"is all that's needed to start programming"

No it's not. You first have to know that it's a thing that you might be able to do. Who knows what other barriers are there unless they live it?

Hardware is relatively cheap, time is not.

To have been coding for 5-15 years when entering college now... you have to think about the prices and availability of internet/computers 5-15 years ago ;)

15 years ago I was involved with a charity refurbishing 486s (or better) and we were giving them away.

Okay, so you could potentially get a computer.

Now, think about accessing the resources to learn programming: Books, Documentation, Compilers, IDE...

I recall being on 56k internet in 2001, paying by the hour. Couldn't have learn programming, except going around and buying books and tools on CD and offline documentation.

That was the hell of a barrier to entry compared to today.

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