I'm so fucking tired of all these "teach kids to code" and "everyone can code" shit.

It's genuinely not for everyone. Some people are not meant to code, so stop trying to force it down everyone's throat because we're going to end up with a lot of people doing it because of a nice job and shit, not because they want to.

I get many of these programs and shit are to expose people to it and all, but fucking hell stop trying to make everyone fucking programmers

Oh my bad another back then shit, but really: back then, we were few, fascinated by the idea that given enough programming skills, we should be able to do a lot of shit with computers. Even computer gaming was quite a niche back then, let alone programming. We weren't the geeks, we were the nerds. The games were in 2D, mobile phones looked like CB transmitters, walking to school was 10 km uphills BOTH ways, and we used to deep freeze the left over fire in the evening. But we understood how this shit actually WORKED because we were curious, and that made good tech folks.

@Fast-Nop I miss my Nokia Brick (2110)

But I also get what @stuxnet is saying.
Although it’s great for kids who are interested, I also agree it should be a semi niche area, yes we had a harder learning curve back in the 90s / 2000’s but without that learning curve things wouldn’t be the way they are today to reduce that learning curve.

@C0D4 Being hard to learn is not ok.

And idk what it was like in the 90's and 00's, but I feel like it has to be easier with all the free resources, tutorials, and sites like codecademy.

But it definitely needs to stay a niche group of people doing it out of passion. If you think you've seen shit code before, imagine something written by people who hate their job and are only doing it for a nice salary. It'd be atrocious.

@Stuxnet it's not the sites and vids. It's the fundamental curiosity when you're a total noob and don't understand a damn about the machines.

What is your reaction? Is it like, how the fuck does this shit work? Then you're into the club. Ultimately, it's not something alien, it's a part of yourself seen in a mirror made of silicon.

@Stuxnet before such easy access was available it was read the docs and work it out yourself with a lot of sweat and tears, stumble across forums with similar problems ( pre SO ) and adapt / or usually be inspired for a solution from a random block of code or a comment with a vague description with just enough to hint you in the right direction.

As for code bases that are by people who are doing it for the money, I know exactly what they look like and I have to deal with and support the left overs, it’s not fun and it’s so easy to break things without noticing the flow on effects.

@Stuxnet is not about pretending that there are no prerequisites to be a good dev, but about allowing anyone to try. Without that you won't know if one has prerequisites.
Everyone can learn and do math, but not everyone can be good mathematician. Same goes for, let's say, digging holes.

Have you heard yourselves. Chill out. Not everyone is going to want to be a coder, only the ones it ignites a spark in. For fucks sake. I welcome it wholeheartedly!

When I was a kid we had to learn woodwork and metal work, It didn’t make me want to be a fucking carpenter, although some did.

Maybe if people have an understanding of coding, we may have less stupid fucking clients in the world.

May I point out as a sort of counter that programming is a lot more necessary for people who didn't have to program before? Like artists and biologists and economists and statisticians and so on. It's pervasive now. Heck, I know several Blender and Maya artists who managed to learn enough Python to make plugins for themselves to speed up their work, it's awesome that that's possible and you don't need to spend years working on the craft to achieve it.

I believe it's that kind of thing that people want to spread with this focus on coding education. Programming should not just for a niche group of hardcore programmers, it should be for everyone because computers are pervasive now and programming is essentially learning how to use computers at a deeper level.

Teach everyone to code != force everyone to be a software dev.

We had an introduction to computers class when I was in school, in my opinion it was a compete waste. It was a week of typing courses, followed by training with Appleworks. The next year they switched to MSOffice, which would have been a waste too. These are not skills to learn. They are customer-oriented software that can be picked up just fine without formal instruction. That time would have been brilliantly spent with some very low-impact programming instruction, in my opinion. If people aren't into it, then they don't have to take any more courses in the field. If they are, they can pursue it.

I honestly believe that they do this to pay devs less.

Why should you pay someone about 30 to 50 dllrs an hour when a bunch of morons with basic understanding will happily do it for 8 to 15 dllrs an hour? Pffft forget the analytical mindset, forget academic training and everything in between, youe w3schools certificate is more than enough!!

This is why I am so against. It's bad enough that for every Joe thar applies to a dev job we have 40 Patels that will do it for the equivalent to 20 dllrs a day. No, we need to bring it down to EVERYONE can do it.

Fuck this. I am going to trade school. I will prob be better off in Texas as a fucking welder pretty damn soon.

@AleCx04 question. If everyone could do it, doesn't it mean that it wasn't exactly top of the line in the first place? Why would you want to compete in a job that anyone else with a basic w3schools certificate is even technically capable of doing? Go higher.

Even if the resulting code is crappier companies save money overall by outsourcing or hiring cheap ass third world labour or people with only basic training. And we (third world) are getting better all the time at doing low-level grunt work :p

Again. My point is, the niche thing you folks are talking about, that's always available. It never went away. Nobody's going to hire some random Indian company or code camp certificate-holder to make something like a realtime messaging system to handle millions of concurrent users. Nope. That absolutely requires skills that take a ton of time and investment to develop.

@AleCx04 the exclusive welders club wud complain about you, "anybody can weld these days!"

@Stuxnet if the point is having only passionate people in the industry... Let's be clear it's already the case. I know a lot of people for which programming is just a career. Like Civil Engineer some years before.

@RememberMe Outsourcing to India isn't cheap because you get exactly what you pay from India.

@Fast-Nop still costs lesser overall than developing using devs from the home country only, right, otherwise, why would the outsourcing industry even exist?

In that context I'd call it cheap. Or at least cheaper.

@Fast-Nop both India and local country have developers who can produce shitty code. That's no rule.

@RememberMe I have yet to see an outsourcing project that actually reduces cost. The outsourcing industry exists because managers are lured by low wages and think India is a magic lamp they just have to rub.

You can get decent devs in India, but they aren't that cheap, and the coordination/review overhead is still an issue.

Most shops in India don't pay devs well, so to earn money, many good devs quit dev and become managers instead. Or they quit India and go to Western countries.

The attrition rate is horrible because changing jobs is the only way to keep the salary just up to inflation. Rookies with 2 years experience are defined as experienced engineers.

On top of that, Western companies fuck up communication themselves because they think an Indian "yes" equals a Western "yes", which it doesn't.

@mt3o and you won't get the decent ones if you don't pay.

@Fast-Nop indeed. Just keep in mind that sometimes that's just enough.

@RememberMe the thing is, by jumping into the whole "everyone can code" mentality , the people that hire and require devs will begin to think that everything is easy.

You and me both know that making a website is different from creating a compiler. We know that one takes considerably more skill and time than the other.
Employers will not, since "ZOMG 10 YEAR OLD CREATES APP!!" Is all over the news.

Shitz in China, they are introducing concepts of M.L to Children. Not because they want these kids to have a high paying job when they grow up. But because if everyone gets it and can do it, then no one is special.

We have difficulty with retention rates because of this. People have told me to my face that they hate programming but want a good paying job. All it does is also isolate the passionate people from them because no matter how much I understand people want and need jobs, I want them to go get a different job and let me have the one I dream of.

I agree, if you were to say everyone can be a x, x is easy, and then just shove basic knowledge down everybodys throughts, what would happen?

First everyone will try and get the "good Job" and salary of someone much more fit for the job. Do to this misinformation they perceed to not develop their own strengths and talents and devalue the profession instead. Until HR notices that these people do not develop like people who are fit for the Job, the damage will be already done to booth parties.
One will have a undervalued job which could lead to them not being able to develop their skills in this industry, and the other will have wasted his time developing skills in an industry where he is never gonna be able to achieve the things he started perusing this profession for.

This might happen naturally, but someone caused this mess on a large scale by kind of lying to you when you started. No profession is easy and not everyone can be anything. Develop your talents instead.

@SHA-16384 oh yeah that thing with graphic programming and just clicking shit together and how easy it is. That was already an idea 20 years ago.

The real systems that I have seen don't deliver on promise - looking at you, LabView. As soon as it isn't the simple thing from the Powerpoint sales presentation, that graphic shit is even harder to understand than code.

I couldn't agree more!