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Comment by LandR | Hacker News Reader

> Are you seriously suggesting a world where we want to make it harder for people to understand programming language literature?

I'd like the barrier for entry to be a bit higher if I'm honest. Maybe then I wouldn't have to work with code created by so many idiots.

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My experience is that the people who hold this sort of view produce the worst output and are the least willing to improve it. Make of that what you will…

We're talking about literature related to programming language design not Stack Overflow here.

More people able to understand the literature means more people who can contribute and contribute effectively. That means better programming languages, better tooling and better educated people.

We have all been "idiots" at some point. Gatekeeping is how you kill a field by removing all the beginners who might one day produce the next big development.

The solution to that isn't to make programming harder, but to make writing poor quality code harder. That's also in part, indirectly, a notation problem.

I don't think making the barrier higher is gonna solve your "issue". I think you'll only achieve having less developers overal.

I've worked with some brilliant booksmart people that produced god aweful code. Being able to understand literature/notation isn't going to make you a better developer by default. There's a lot more that goes into it than that.

This opinion is often followed by laments that their favorite language has only a tiny niche audience and no major accomplishments outside of some academic examples, while some clearly inferior language with a low barrier to entry is inexplicably way more popular than their preferred language.

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