Hacker News Reader

Comment by aahortwwy | Hacker News Reader

This just isn't true, though.

I have quite a few non-technical colleagues who know just enough Python to Get Shit Done.

My father (a writer) taught himself R for research purposes and is productive with it.

Universal Paperclips has a super-basic JavaScript codebase[0] but was a really popular game.

Thing is, if you search "how to do X in Python" you're going to get a bunch of resources aimed at professionals because they're the ones looking for that stuff most of the time. That doesn't mean the resources are prohibitively complex, they're just for people solving a different problem.

[0] https://github.com/jgmize/paperclips/tree/master/docs

View on HN

Oooooh did you just call Frank Lantz super-basic kek

I think he's a good contrast to the "great computer scientist, but not a JS person" in the linked article.

He initially built Universal Paperclips to learn JavaScript. It's a cool thing, a lot of people played it, and it doesn't rely on an incomprehensible ecosystem. It's two HTML files, four scripts, two CSS files, and an image.

You don't _need_ all the stuff people complain about to do cool things with JavaScript. Especially if you're just getting started with the language.

I agree. You just need to actually be a good designer :) When you have a fun and clear vision for what you want to build, it's hugely motivating and you're way more likely to finish

But are they building software tools that are useful and stable enough to distribute? That's the level of capability he is talking about.

That's not what the linked Twitter thread is talking about, nor is it how I interpret "make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world" or "make a quick application to accomplish a small task." Those things are eminently achievable without having to embrace the level of complexity that's so popular in professional software development.

And I actually think the level of capability you're talking about is within closer reach than most people realize. Certainly it's much easier now than it was even 10 years ago. Probably not something that a non-programmer can accomplish on day 1, but I'm not sure there's many crafts that can be learned that quickly.

By "distribute," I didn't mean as a commercial product. I meant just sharing with other people. There is a huge difference between being able to tinker with Python/R and being able to make a package usable by strangers.

The onramp from

- script without a main function

- to personal or ad hoc codebase for non-tech workplace

- to packaged code to cope with namespaces + type hints + general best practices

- to code that reads like good code from the major open source project

is long, but the slope is easy. There are no discontinuities. Basically anyone who can use Python to glue together networkx/sklearn etc. can eventually write software tools that are useful and stable enough to distribute.

That should not be the litmus test for writing software. Lots of software can have 1 user, yourself. Stability and ability to distribute be damned

Reply on news.ycombinator.com