<story><title>Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard</title><url>http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bad_user</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s where I disagree with other people - software development is special in that it requires focus, relentlessness, intelligence, creativity and I also find it interesting that many software developers tend to suffer conditions from the autistic spectrum. To me that&amp;#x27;s a clear sign that software development requires the mind to be hardwired in a certain way.&lt;p&gt;And the thing is - I never needed handholding, which is why I have mixed feelings about such educational efforts. For me that desert of despair was fun and nothing could have stopped me. For me entering a couple of lines of code that made the computer do something was like a game and felt like magic, with each piece of knowledge learned increasing my skill, in a sort of real-life RPG game. This started before high-school, I remember begging my parents for a PC and I started reading books on hardware and one on BASIC before having that PC, so that&amp;#x27;s how desperate I was.&lt;p&gt;And my story is very similar to others. It&amp;#x27;s undeniable that some people have an inclination towards software development, like a deep internal urge that must be satisfied, much like a drug addiction. This is why you&amp;#x27;ll find many developers saying that even if they wouldn&amp;#x27;t need to work, they&amp;#x27;d do it for free.&lt;p&gt;To me educational efforts for adults are misplaced. If you want more people to become software developers, you need to show them the magic while they are young. As for most adults, I believe that the ship has sailed already.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tokenrove</author><text>I disagree, and I disagree because I used to think this way (having lived and breathed programming since age five), until I started to meet people who had started to program in university (which I considered _way_ too late) and who had become excellent programmers.  Not adequate-for-a-job programmers, but best-of-breed programmers.&lt;p&gt;In fact, often better programmers than &amp;quot;naturals&amp;quot; because along the way they had learned a lot of discipline that isn&amp;#x27;t necessary when programming is fun -- but as every &amp;quot;born programmer&amp;quot; turned professional finds out, programming isn&amp;#x27;t always fun.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Learning to Code Is So Damn Hard</title><url>http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bad_user</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s where I disagree with other people - software development is special in that it requires focus, relentlessness, intelligence, creativity and I also find it interesting that many software developers tend to suffer conditions from the autistic spectrum. To me that&amp;#x27;s a clear sign that software development requires the mind to be hardwired in a certain way.&lt;p&gt;And the thing is - I never needed handholding, which is why I have mixed feelings about such educational efforts. For me that desert of despair was fun and nothing could have stopped me. For me entering a couple of lines of code that made the computer do something was like a game and felt like magic, with each piece of knowledge learned increasing my skill, in a sort of real-life RPG game. This started before high-school, I remember begging my parents for a PC and I started reading books on hardware and one on BASIC before having that PC, so that&amp;#x27;s how desperate I was.&lt;p&gt;And my story is very similar to others. It&amp;#x27;s undeniable that some people have an inclination towards software development, like a deep internal urge that must be satisfied, much like a drug addiction. This is why you&amp;#x27;ll find many developers saying that even if they wouldn&amp;#x27;t need to work, they&amp;#x27;d do it for free.&lt;p&gt;To me educational efforts for adults are misplaced. If you want more people to become software developers, you need to show them the magic while they are young. As for most adults, I believe that the ship has sailed already.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pm90</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t really agree with the notion that software development is something that others cannot learn if they try to do it; that seems like a very harsh perspective which, from my anecdotal experience, is far from the truth. Any skill can be learned if you have the discipline to put in regular effort: that&amp;#x27;s just the way the human mind works. I do agree that for a lot of people, Software Engineering is &lt;i&gt;easier&lt;/i&gt; because they have a certain kind of brain, just like Mathematics or Physics or Music is easier or &amp;quot;makes sense&amp;quot; for some people more than others.&lt;p&gt;If anything, we need to promote education among adults, give them the choice to possibly check out any vocation that they would want to try. Liberate them from the notion that they are &amp;quot;stuck&amp;quot; doing what they chose to do earlier in their life. I&amp;#x27;m not saying that its easy; you have to start small and take baby steps. And its not something that can be done in a day or a week or a month. But if modern society has provided us one great benefit, it is of making knowledge accessible very inexpensively.</text></comment>