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Re:From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way by rfrey on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @05:26PM (#13274227)
"Most trades can be taught to anyone"

This makes me suspect you haven't had much exposure to trades. Getting good... really good... at welding, or cabinetry, or stairbuilding, takes at least as much dedication and skill as getting good at programming.

Re:From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way by dozzie on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @05:50PM (#13274359)
Omnius didn't say that this anyone will be good. The same applies to welders, woodworkers, and all the rest of craftsmen.

Note that there are plenty of programming jobs and tasks that are boring, repetitive, easy to do, and of little impact to the underlying system, that really need to be done by human. Things along the lines of modifying a report, extracting some data on a request from other departments, or adding a button to an Android application.

Somebody still needs to do them, because they're often virtually impossible to automate away, but you don't want to waste a really good programmer on something like that, and a really good programmer usually will not want to do them either.

Re:From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way by hash-set on Thursday December 29, 2016 @10:27AM (#13277749)
I disagree. There are crafts people who do awesome woodwork, but woodworking is a hell of a lot easier to learn that software development. Also, my dad was a welder, a very good one, but most of the welders he worked with were drunk fools and did 'acceptable' enough work. If you have half a brain you can learn to weld and even fabricate metals. I've been in that world and I know exactly how smart those people all are (hint: most dropped out of high school).