Re:I self-learned to code at 30
by crispyambulance on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @06:19PM
(#26497483)
We don't need "millions of Hemingway's".
The parent comment was suggesting that very few people can code-- and by "code" they meant "production applications".
I am trying to say that lot's of people can code, well enough to solve their domain problems, well enough to put food on their tables, well enough to not need "real programmers" in increasing numbers of scenarios. Just because they're not doing internet scale application development or cutting edge mission critical projects doesn't mean they "can't code".
There's a long and continuous spectrum between Hemingway-like programmers to bored-out-of-their-skulls enterprise developers to lunch-time dilettantes who are running a far more of their business than they should on brittle excel pivot tables and VBA macros.
And "writing" is still a good skill to have, even if you are not a professional essayist or author.
Yes. But writing a letter to friend (or automating your accounting in Excel) differs from writing "War and Peace" (or writing an OS kernel). I think everybody is capable of learning to do the former, but have a really hard time beliving the same for the latter.
There's also "nothing special" about writing. Somehow, though, we don't see millions of Hemingways pop up each year.
Writing code is a form of art. There is a science behind it, but the same is true for many other art forms. It's true that everybody can be an artist. Not everybody can be a good artist, though. It's equally true for writers, painters, and coders.