"When I’m an old man, I think most people will have the ability to program."
I keep hearing this on hacker news and I'm not sure why people think this. There are a lot of people who can't form abstractions or pay enough attention to detail to be able to program. People either get it (and can become great at it) or they don't (they will fail their programming classes and/or give up). As a CS student, I remember in the lower division classes half the people scored in the B+ to A range, and the other half nearly failed and had to drop the class and switch majors. This brought me to the conclusion that CS is not for everyone..
He doesn't really explain why he thinks that sentence could be true, but on the face of it it's almost absurd.
Not just because programming is difficult, but simply because most people don't have the ability to do all the easy things. I'm hopeless with most tools; I can figure out the easy stuff because it is, well, easy, but I would need to learn on the spot, so I don't have that ability now. The same is true for an almost infinite number of other easy things. Most people can't even cook.
Even if programming were easy, why would people chose to be able to program instead of other abilities if they don't have to.
When I’m an old man, I think most people will have the ability to program.".
Busy period ahead required to achieve this in the UK! Recently reported that '49% of the working population have the maths skills of an 11-year-old or worse'.
"The test was administered twice; once at the beginning, before any instruction at all, and again after three weeks of class. The striking thing is that there was virtually no movement at all between the groups from the first to second test. Either you had a consistent model in your mind immediately upon first exposure to assignment, the first hurdle in programming-- or else you never developed one!"
You'd be amazed how many of the bottom half suck it up long enough to graduate, get a job, and leave a pretty mess for sad-sack contractors like me to clean up.
I keep hearing this on hacker news and I'm not sure why people think this. There are a lot of people who can't form abstractions or pay enough attention to detail to be able to program. People either get it (and can become great at it) or they don't (they will fail their programming classes and/or give up). As a CS student, I remember in the lower division classes half the people scored in the B+ to A range, and the other half nearly failed and had to drop the class and switch majors. This brought me to the conclusion that CS is not for everyone..