Re:Kids are the future; teach them how to code
by SkyMarshal on Friday February 10, 2012 @01:01PM
(#3576741)
My dad and sister are lawyers, and I seriously considered it at one point (took an LSAT course), so I have some familiarity with it. My impression of the field is that it's similar to programming - very detail and abstraction oriented. To think correctly at higher levels of abstraction over any domain, you have to know the details and fundamentals of it, be it law or programming.
As far as the differences, I'd like to say that there is less room for error in programming, since you're working with a perfectly literal machine. However, you can create incorrect abstractions that fail to run and immediately throw errors, but you can also create incorrect abstractions that do run, but return either obviously or subtly incorrect results. Not so different from the legal system.
So I suppose the big difference is the relative accessibility of the two. As soon as you buy a $200 netbook and start programming basic, c, or whatever, you're immediately subjected to the instant feedback loop. With law, you can take a few courses in undergrad, or go to law school. But attempting to learn law on your own, without guidance, is probably easier to go off on tangents, than attempting to learn programming on your own.
In either case, transitioning the skills from one domain to another will require some study of the core body of knowledge, hence the state of legal discussion on programmer sites (and state of tech discussion in Congress, for that matter).
As far as the differences, I'd like to say that there is less room for error in programming, since you're working with a perfectly literal machine. However, you can create incorrect abstractions that fail to run and immediately throw errors, but you can also create incorrect abstractions that do run, but return either obviously or subtly incorrect results. Not so different from the legal system.
So I suppose the big difference is the relative accessibility of the two. As soon as you buy a $200 netbook and start programming basic, c, or whatever, you're immediately subjected to the instant feedback loop. With law, you can take a few courses in undergrad, or go to law school. But attempting to learn law on your own, without guidance, is probably easier to go off on tangents, than attempting to learn programming on your own.
In either case, transitioning the skills from one domain to another will require some study of the core body of knowledge, hence the state of legal discussion on programmer sites (and state of tech discussion in Congress, for that matter).