Re:The difficulty of programming depends on the layer and qu...
by bitwize on Sunday April 25, 2021 @04:46AM
(#26931284)
Yes, programming is hard.
Programming requires reasoning about long chains of cause and effect in an abstract realm, expressed in a very terse, symbol-dense language (computer code). Writing even a short (but nontrivial) program in BASIC is beyond the reach of most people. This isn't because they're stupid -- they just haven't had training in the necessary abstract, sequential logic. A person can live a successful life and die leaving a comfortable inheritance to their children without ever having to develop that sort of logic skill -- and putting in the work to develop it requires enormous activation energy -- so most people don't. For them, "learning to code" is a skill so far out of reach and so removed from their daily experience that they may as well not try.
And learning to code well requires even more activation energy...
Programming requires reasoning about long chains of cause and effect in an abstract realm, expressed in a very terse, symbol-dense language (computer code). Writing even a short (but nontrivial) program in BASIC is beyond the reach of most people. This isn't because they're stupid -- they just haven't had training in the necessary abstract, sequential logic. A person can live a successful life and die leaving a comfortable inheritance to their children without ever having to develop that sort of logic skill -- and putting in the work to develop it requires enormous activation energy -- so most people don't. For them, "learning to code" is a skill so far out of reach and so removed from their daily experience that they may as well not try.
And learning to code well requires even more activation energy...