When Code Is Hot

Jon sounds similar to a spoiled child when someone else brings the same toy to 1st grade show and tell. Jon, you're not unique and there are millions of future programmers that will start learning to code in the next few months, curriculum just has to adapt and change to make it easier for newcomers to grok. It really grinds my gears when he basically said anyone doing programming grunt work shouldn't be programming. Everyone has to start somewhere.

I think the author of the post is completely underestimating how many different fields require some proficiency in managing data. I work in biology (genomics and proteomics) and I teach a summer course to biomed PhD students where I try to convince them that it is essential to learn some aspects of data mining, including a scripting language (Python/Perl) and/or R/Matlab. To be successful in bio-medical research these days you need to be able to reach out to available datasets that relate to your work and combine them with your own observations.Each experiment is also producing a lot more observations than in the past so you need to be able to handle larger datasets as well. My impression is that anyone who does not have some proficiency in programming will not be able to compete in these areas of research. This does not mean that we have to be able to do great code and build great software, a small increase in programming skills really goes a long way. My impression is that this is not just true in biology but it is happening everywhere (ex. business intelligence, social sciences, marketing, etc).

"Learning how to program for its own sake is like learning French purely on the off chance that you one day find yourself in Paris".

And I don't think, it's bad or wrong in fact - you may learn anything you want just as a hobby - just for exercising your brain. And it will be great if a business guy, for example, will understand a programmer way of thinking.

I can tell my story - guess, it'll be somehow interesting. I was a "business guy" not long ago and I think, I am still. But when I started to work on Travelatus with my partner, I decided to learn to code - just to be helpful someday and to understand the product better. It was in November 2011 when I started to learn Django and Python, then in 2012 I started Codeacademy courses.

It was interesting to find out that here (in Moscow) there was no strong Django community that could be useful for developers networking. So, as business guy trying to learn I cooperated with 2 partners to build such community. That's how "business thinking" helped me and other developers, I guess.

We don't treat any other profession this way. Do civil engineers have a specific bridge they'd like to build before they become engineers? Or do accountants have a specific balance sheet they'd like to create before they get their degree?

"I am skeptical of the notion that many people who start learning to code in their 30s or even 20s will ever really grok the fundamental abstract notions of software architecture and design."

This is an incredibly silly sentence.

I just don't get that memories of bubbles are so short. This everyone-learn-to-code is just like 1997 or so, a few years before the big IT death.