Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

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>it's about lowering the bar so that (cheaper) non-developers can participate.

I think that is a terrible approach to anything. Programming isn't that hard and without a doubt anyone who can do business analysis is mentally capable of writing Python or whatever other scripting language.

Instead of teaching people something universal, which they can use everywhere and which they can expand their knowledge of as needed, you are teaching them a deeply flawed process, which is highly specific, highly limited and something which the developer would never use themselves.

Having a business analyst who is able to implement tasks in a standard programming language is immensely more valuable than someone who knows some graphic DSL you developed for your business. Both the interest of the learner and the corporation are in teaching real programming skills.

Even the approach of creating something so "non-programmers" can do programming to is completely condescending and if I were in that position I would refuse to really engage on that basis alone.

> you are teaching them a deeply flawed process, which is highly specific, highly limited and something which the developer would never use themselves.

That kind of lock-in can be a feature from the employer's perspective. I did actual coding for years in an environment where what I learned was not very widely applicable at all, for similar reasons. I'm now happily in recovery :) But it makes it harder to leave when you feel like you lag behind where you should be in your career.

I don't think tools like Zapier are condescending. I can and have written code to connect APIs, but Zapier made some stuff way easier, and it lets people like my wife get the same stuff done with far less effort. She has no interest in learning programming. There will be stuff the tool can't do, so then the programmers can step in.

And in my prior job, many people became BAs from a coding background specifically to get out of writing code. They can do it - they don't want to. They're happier in MS Office or similar tools.

>That kind of lock-in can be a feature from the employer's perspective

And it can be a huge problem, as he has to maintain a complex visual DSL and teach it to every new employee. Locking employees in seems like a very easy way to make people miserable and unproductive.

An employer wants employers who are long term productive, giving them good tools and the ability to learn new things allows them to not hate their jobs. And an employee who knows basic programming is always an asset.

>And in my prior job, many people became BAs from a coding background specifically to get out of writing code. They can do it - they don't want to. They're happier in MS Office or similar tools.

I completely understand that. But there are definitely problems that need to be solved with programming and having people with the ability to do so can only be an asset, even if they aren't a full time developers.

In general I think it is pretty hard sell to teach someone a skill with no other applications. This is different if that person only wants to achieve a certain thing, then transferability is irrelevant. But if you want someone to learn something new, it requires for them to understand why they should learn. Programming isn't particularly hard, teaching someone a standard programming language and giving them the ability to use that in their jobs, instead of a specialized DSL is an enormous benefit.

If you came to me and told me you are going to teach me something which is totally different from what you yourself would do and a special way by which you have made something easy so that I can understand it, I would refuse. I guess that I might be projecting here, but I genuinely feel that many people would look at it the same way.

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