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Comment by lutorm | Hacker News Reader

"Frankly, every good programmer I know started programming long before they went to college or at least programmed outside of college for their enjoyment. If you haven't done that and don't do that then I really have to question if you're in the right profession."

Do you apply those standards to everyone, or just to programmers? If only programmers, why?

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I personally don't know of any surgeons who performed surgery before going to medical school or outside of medical school for enjoyment.

Medicine has a much more rigorous training program.

Same goes for other more common disciplines too, especially the engineering disciplines. How many people were building bridges, designing buildings, or creating CPUs before their formal education?

The engineering-ish side of CS (programming) is far more similar to the sciences (physics, chemistry) or mathematics than other engineering disciplines are because anyone with drive can and does delve into it without the help/permission of formal educators.

This is to say nothing of the fact that real CS is a branch of mathematics...

Medicine is one class of skill.

However, there are others in the same vein as programming:

  * fine arts (drawing, painting)
  * music 
  * football and other sports
  * creative writing

I'd guess that any student majoring in the above fields already possessed basic (or even advanced) skills before entering the university.

On the other side, there are fields that are more "professional", where students only begin learning these disciplines at college:

  * medicine
  * psychology
  * economics
  * law

Obviously, students are exposed to concepts before college, but they wait until they get the professional credential before doing surgery, filing lawsuits, prescribing antidepressants, or raising interest rates.

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