TL;DR: All the evidence shows that programming requires a high level of aptitude that only a small percentage of the population possess. The...
Learnable Programming
Here's a trick question: How do we get people to understand programming?
Stop saying learning to code is easy.
(The photo above was taken at the Microsoft NYC office of three amazing young ...
Motivating Adult Learners by Introducing Programming Concepts with Scratch
Novice programmers usually fail to combine abstract concepts and knowledge into program design, even though they know the syntax and semantics of individual statement. Adult novice programmers with little computer background knowledge might face more ...
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about programming, or that programming is somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else. Felleisen et al. give a nod to this trend in their book How to Design Programs, when they say "Bad programming is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies." The Abtruse Goose comic also had their take.
Small Programming Tricks
A lot of effective engineering comes from the accumulation of small nuggets of knowledge.
Learn to code. Or don't.
Reasons to learn to code: * You have an offer for a job that involves coding, or could benefit from it * Existing tools don’t serve your needs well, or at all * You enjoy it “Learn to code” is the common refrain for what to do when you’re poor. It’
The traits of a proficient programmer
Bridging the gap between competence and proficiency
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
We should rethink how we teach people to code | deadSimpleTech
It's fair to say that the tech industry at the moment is not in a good place. Software engineers tend to be detached, demotivated and unwilling to care much about the work they're doing beyond their paycheck. Code quality is poor on the whole, made worse by the current spate of vibe coding and whatever other febrile ideas come out of Sam Altman's brain. Much of the software that we write is either useless or actively hurts people. And the talented, creative people that we most need in the industry are pushed to the margins of it.
Learning to code is overrated: An accomplished programmer would rather his kids learn to read and reason
Mayor de Blasio is winning widespread praise for his recent promise that, within 10 years, all of New York City’s public schoolchildren will take computer science classes. But as a career programmer who founded two successful software…
Why Can’t Programmers... Program?
I was incredulous when I read this observation from Reginald Braithwaite: Like me, the author is having trouble with the fact that 199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can’t write code at all. I repeat: they can’t write any code whatsoever. The author he’s
Hey, Computer Scientists! Stop Hating on the Humanities
Opinion: Computer science departments need to teach coders more than just how to code.
How To Think Like A Programmer
We asked 15,000 people who they are, and how they’re learning to code
More than 15,000 people responded to the 2016 New Coder Survey, granting researchers an unprecedented glimpse into how adults are learning to code. We’ve released the entire dataset of participants’ individual responses to all 48 questions — under th...
The Most Important Non-Programming Skills for Programmers
Skills for programmers that are so much more important than any language, library, or framework
