Parlez-vous Python? 164
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction is booming, as those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else. Knowing how the digital pieces fit together will be crucial to ensuring that they are not left in the dark ages. 'Inasmuch as you need to know how to read English, you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web,' says Sarah Henry, 39, an investment manager who took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web, and WordPress, a blogging service. 'I'm not going to sit here and say that I can crank out a site today, but I can look at basic code and understand it. I understand how these languages function within the Internet.' The blooming interest in programming is part of a national trend of more people moving toward technical fields. 'To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers,' says Peter Harsha. 'It is more than knowing how to use Word or Excel but how to use a computer to solve problems.' However seasoned programmers say learning how to adjust the layout of a Web page is one thing, but picking up the skills required to develop a sophisticated online service or mobile application is an entirely different challenge that cannot be acquired by casual use for a few hours at night and on the weekends."
Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
. 'To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers,'
I believe I speak for every computer geek on the planet when I say "Ah! He's full of sh*t!" We've all done tech support. We've all been asked to fix the computer of our friend or family member. And we are STILL endlessly mystified as to how people can be so damn clueless. No. Being successful in the modern world doesn't depend on fluency in computers... it still depends on the same things that humanity has also (perhaps erroneously) placed value on: Who you know, how attractive you are, your personality, and in semi-rare cases, how good you are at what you do.
Re:Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
yes but don't forget, she says she has taken a wordpress class and "can understand the basic code of the internet" or somesuch. problem really seems to be that the masses out there seem to truly believe that swiping colourful icons around on a touchscreen is the same as understanding how computers work. they are literally so dumb that they don't even know what smart looks like.
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At least they know what a smartphone looks like.
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Sounds like another instance of the Dunning-Kruger Effect [wikipedia.org].
Re:Lies! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not really a skill you pick up out of curiosity.
It is if you're a Mongolian child, which was sorta my whole point.
Re:Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are a lot of people out there who want to know what's happening behind the screen when they swipe colorful icons around.
There are a lot of people out there who want to get a better idea of how computers work.
It can be done. Learning Python or Java is a reasonable place to start.
I remember a special issue of Scientific American on computers, which had an article that walked you through how a simple, Turing-style computer worked on the logic circuit level -- reading from memory, adding binaries, storing the answer, etc. I spent an hour figuring out the illustration, and I had a pretty good conceptual understanding of how a computer worked. Any reasonably intelligent person who was willing to work at it could have read that article and understood it. A lot of people did. They understood the future a lot better.
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Re:Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the GP AC should not have been so glib, but he has a point. There are a lot of very smart people (including young people) who have never compiled a kernel, or fired up Eclipse, or who don't even know what HTML is. You just think they are dumb because you have, presumably, structured much of your intellectual life around these concepts, much like other /.ers. They seem obvious to you and you can't see how others could fail to understand.
But imagine how your relatively careless writing (no criticism here, by the way, this is /. after all, so who cares?) would look to someone who writes for a living like, say, a New York Times reporter. To someone like that, who has spent most of their intellectual efforts learning how to write well, you yourself probably would seem "literally so dumb that they don't even know what smart looks like."
At least, that is, if they shared your apparent view that everyone has to know the same sorts of things that you know in order to be any more than an idiot. But we can probably agree that they shouldn't judge anyone's efforts by that standard. And neither should you.
Re:Lies! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lies! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is true, and interesting. I do think, though, that a lot of people around here could use to develop more reasonable (not to mention kind) expectations about the state of other peoples' knowledge and its relationship to their intellect. Here's an obvious place to start: the more specialized one's knowledge becomes, the less likely it is that failure to posses it is a good indicator of stupidity. (Of course possession of specialized knowledge probably is a good indication that the person in question is intelligent. This is probably part of the problem.).
Its a career because it's trivial to do, right? (Score:3)
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I believe I speak for every computer geek on the planet when I say
You don't speak for me, because I think you are basically grandstanding and changing the subject. The assertion from the article that success requires computer skills doesn't rule out success also requiring other things. Get more training, especially in reading comprehension and rational analysis.
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But it doesn't require computer skills.
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I believe I speak for every computer geek on the planet when I say
The assertion from the article that success requires computer skills doesn't rule out success also requiring other things.
So you think Warren Buffet fixes his own computers?
Does Mitt Romney code his own webpage?
Methinks your interpretation of "success" differs from the social norm...
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Most people in advanced economies are massively affected by HTML and programming languages. They correctly know that they can acomplish almost all they want from within Facebook or Twitter, but they might want to understand more. It doesn't mean that they will, necessarily, become professional application programmers or web designers.
There is alot space between knows nothing and full-time professional. There is also a range of incomes between the two. Actually some of the jobs that would benefit from some
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To address the content of your post, as a budding hobby-coder myself (always been more of a 'hardware guy' professionally), I too appreciate the increasing amount of quality, free training available online... but what any of that has to do with TFA & AC's assertion that success in life is dependent on
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The assertion from the article that success requires computer skills doesn't rule out success also requiring other things.
That's a very good point. Necessary conditions are different from sufficient conditions. It's necessary to be female to give birth to a live child, but being a female doesn't guarantee birth of a live child.
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You are only correct if none of the computer-ignorant people the OP has come across were ever successful. If they were both ignorant about computers and successful, then success clearly does not require you not to be ignorant about computers.
Quite frankly I think the lot of you should "get more training" in choosing the right words for the situation. We all know success is difficult to define much less factor, so why are we pretending that computer skills or gregariousness or connections or what-have-yo
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"Ah! He's full of sh*t!"
I'm hoping this was in the tone of George Carlin's stand up on this matter! I have to second this! Far too often when I "help" friends and family, it's because they can't follow the bloody prompts. Or be bothered to read the forms as they come across their screen. What's that you didn't want to install Fango Bango along with your "freeware"? Or heaven for bid they be sure that 1.) the machine is plugged in, or 2.) that the outlet it's in isn't also tied to a wall switch. Even at work it's very rare I
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Far too often when I "help" friends and family, it's because they can't follow the bloody prompts. Or be bothered to read the forms as they come across their screen.
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/627/ [xkcd.com]
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Now if they could just learn to read and follow a flow chart...
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I think all of this supports the idea that one can be successful without a knowledge of computers so long as you have someone to do the computer stuff for you.
Ironically, the fact that these people need us in order to be successful, actually allows us to be successful too, so lets not criticize too heavily...
Re:Lies! (Score:4, Insightful)
One can be successful without a knowledge of many things. However, your opportunities for success (including more middle of the road success, not just top-of-your-profession success) may be narrower. A lawyer with a better understanding of computers than his peers may have more success when it comes to litigating some cases, for example. Or maybe he has an understanding of chemistry, or medicine, or engineering, or anything else that might mean he can read and digest related documents faster, follow arguments better, sift the important from the irrelevant and think of things others might not.
This is not just about being able to 'do the computer stuff', it's also about people who may have commission software, make purchasing, investment or budgeting decisions, understand organizations which produce or heavily use software, write regulations, laws or standards, or do many other things in other specialisms that have some sort of connection with computers.
Learning a few basic coding skills may only be a small part of what may be useful...but a better conceptual understanding and a better understanding of the nature of working with IT/software might not just help them make better decisions, but help them interact in a better and less frustrating way with the IT specialists they employ/work for/work with.
Re:Lies! (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be forgetting that "fluency" on computers, in a modern work environment, pretty much means being able to remember your work PC's password and use a browser and MS Office.
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he is exaggerating to emphasize the point. Don't read to much into it. I am sure that he did not mean that there are literally zero people in the world who will be successful without being "fluent" in computers.
Re:Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a non-computer geek but in the 1990s I learned HTML well enough to put up a quick web site, because it was fun and it was useful. I also learned how to put together a few databases and spreadsheets, and automated my word processing programs. I know about as much FORTRAN and BASIC as you would get in an introductory 101 course. I used to read Forrest Mims' notebooks and build digital circuits. I like it. I like flashing lights. I like programming f=1/r^2 fields. I like to open up the case and figure out what the parts do. It helps me understand what's going on in the world around me. So sue me.
I think any intellectually curious person wants to learn a lot of things, just because they're fun. I took my car apart and put it together. I learned the basics of a few foreign languages, a lot of math, chemistry, history, art, filmmaking, poetry, and other things I'll never use professionally. I could place respectably in a contest for the world's worst piano player.
I realize how offended people get when a novice, an amateur, presumes to learn something that they are an expert in. How could they affront your wisdom by suggesting that they are basking in the same sun? However, their target is different. As somebody in TFA mentioned, he learned enough to appreciate what real programmers are doing, so maybe you will get the respect you deserve.
Python? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love Python as much as the next programmer, but how does this story relate?
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Like this I guess [djangoproject.com].
"Doing Python you're shortchanging yourself" (Score:3)
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Re:"Doing Python you're shortchanging yourself" (Score:4, Insightful)
Closures are plenty elegant in Python - just def a nested function, and lo, there's your closure. I suspect you confuse closures with anonymous functions.
Anonymous funcitons, now - Python has a shorthand expression form for them for use with basic stuff like map/filter/fold, but for something larger you need a named function you can pass. In practice, this doesn't affect things nearly as much as a Rubyist would think, because Python has syntactic sugar for pretty much all common cases where Ruby uses multiline closures - namely, iteration, RAII, and callback chaining.
Less dogma, more code, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
At OSCON 2006 I was delivering a presentation on a new heuristic algorithm. We implemented it in C++ and provided Python bindings for it. An hour before my presentation I was in the green room, head deep in code, getting one last bugfix in before the presentation. As I found a bug and fixed it I said to myself, "Python, I love you. You make the hard stuff so easy."
The green room immediately went quiet. I lifted my head and looked across the table and discovered Damian Conway, of Perl fame, was sitting across from me hacking on his own code. Damian looked up, looked around, and particularly at all the people who were expecting a Python-versus-Perl flamewar to arise. "What?" he asked them. "Listen, the only thing I love more than Perl is software that works well, even if it's not written in Perl." Then he went back to his code, I went back to mine, and the room resumed its normal dull roar.
There's a lot of wisdom in Conway's perspective. If you seriously believe that coding in Ruby makes you a better programmer than a Python or a PHP programmer, then I hate to break the news to you, but you've been sadly miseducated.
Yes, I know Ruby. I prefer Python. So what? My best friend knows both languages and prefers Ruby.
Children get into holy wars about code. Grown-ups are too busy writing code to waste time on such childish diversions.
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"If you have a degree in CS and are doing Python by choice you're shortchanging yourself."
If you have a (real) degree in CS and you're doing web development, you're probably shortchanging yourself. If you're not, Ruby and Python are very similar languages (I find Ruby harder to read so I prefer Python) but Python has MUCH better scientifically oriented libraries.
But way to demonstrate the GP's point.
Money makes the world go round.... (Score:2)
Probably true, but if you have a CS degree and you are NOT doing development, you are probably underpaid.
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There are more important things in life than money.
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As someone with a degree in CS doing web development, I agree completely. I got a job doing it during during high school and then shortly after graduating college I moved but went freelance rather than finding a real "CS job", because I already had the contacts and work coming in.
I have been seeing more and more of what the article is talking about, however, and I'm loving it. I no longer feel any guilt about having to bill my hourly rate for intern-level work, because most of the intern-level work (CSS,
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Ha. I love it. You say that ANYBODY who did a degree in computer science is shortchanging himself by not using Ruby. I say some people are better served using Python while others are probably better off with Ruby and you imply I'M making overly broad generalizations.
And yes, I am a scientist.
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structure not code (Score:3)
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, they should look to understand the structure of the internet, protocols and server architecture and such. That's what laymen need in order to keep up.
Uhhh??? Why?
Car analogy: It is super important to know the structure of the car (how many wheels it has, etc) in order to drive it. NO. You need to know that when you press that pedal the car goes faster. When you press that one it goes slower. When you turn this big round thing the car turns.
Does it mean you can make better content if you know the protocols and server architecture? Not really. The person implementing the design might be able to do a better job if he understands clients and servers and
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Yeah, but the problem is, most people don't even know (metaphorically) which pedal to push to make the car go faster, or if they do, they have no idea how fast the car is capable of going, how to refill the gas, change a flat tire, or how much any of the above or the car itself should even cost.
Anyone who is serious about advancing in their field should try to learn the basics of modern technology. They don't need to learn protocols or server architecture, but they should learn a bit ABOUT them.
You could learn to do apps just learning at night (Score:4, Insightful)
You can indeed learn to design mobile apps in just a few hours a night. It will just take a lot of nights. I imagine even a greenhorn could be designing decent apps within a year, just teaching themselves at night. It's really all about self-discipline and motivation there.
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Hobbyist in all sorts of fields develop expert ability. I'd make the argument that computer culture, especially in the case of web dev is one place where this is outstandingly obvious.
what bothered me about that article (Score:5, Insightful)
were the replies underneath. the holier-than-thou pronouncements of arrogant assholes decrying the proliferation of code monkeys
hey, assholes: when someone tries to better themselves, and takes an interest in what you do, smile, and encourage them, or shut up. your ego needs a serious deflation when you adapt such an ivory tower attitude to people just earnestly interested in what you do. don't mock their enthusiasm, most of them might not amount to much real skill growth, but some will
i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
Re:what bothered me about that article (Score:4, Interesting)
i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
If I were acting as a rational self-interested economic actor, though, the last thing I'd want is more competition, because that reduces the value of my skillset.
Re:what bothered me about that article (Score:5, Insightful)
i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
If I were acting as a rational self-interested economic actor, though, the last thing I'd want is more competition, because that reduces the value of my skillset.
Yet another example of confusing training and education. I took a civil war history class at college (mumble) decades ago and it was an education because it gave me a lot to think about, practice at thinking, practice at reasoning... No-one, not myself or anyone else, is under the illusion that it gave me the training necessary to be a trained history professor, or that I'm impacting the technical achievement levels of the history prof job market.
As training, a middle aged investment manager taking intro web classes is probably completely useless. As education, its priceless.
Often training and education seem overlapping, but the older I get, the further apart I see them. I'm not entirely certain we even have a "education" system, it just seems to accidentally happen sometimes, to some people.
Re:what bothered me about that article (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody with an educational understanding of my field can masquerade as somebody with the training and experience to do the job. Ergo, he appears to be a competitor to the manager who wants to keep his labor costs down, regardless of what that does to quality. For the obligatory car analogy, a Yugo can kinda sorta do the same job as a Toyota, so somebody who doesn't understand cars could easily confuse the two and thus set their price expectations for the Toyota based on the price of the Yugo.
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Yeah but all managers know, or know of, another manager who got in big trouble for bringing in a con artist, so its a heck of a lot safer to hire someone who's done the work before. Hence the intense fixation some places have in hiring people with previous experience in the exact skillset.
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If I were acting as a rational self-interested economic actor, though, the last thing I'd want is more competition, because that reduces the value of my skillset.
But in practice, competition is generally good for markets, because it encourages the competitors to strive for excellence/innovation, and the best performers can charge more money for their goods/services.
Whenever someone says they'd like to do what I do, I always encourage them. If there's actually so little work out there that I can handle it all by myself, I worry that I'm in an unhealthy/moribund market.
The only catch being, if they honestly want to compete with me, they have to either be at least as g
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i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
I think most people would prefer more good coders. A lot of people who program suck at it, or just don't understand it at the level they need to because they've gone to school and had their head filled with computer science classes and not much real world. To be a good coder you need to be good at things besides programming.
It has nothing to do with ego, and a lot to do with the fact that the best programmers are often busy fixing the mistakes of other, less-capable programmers. Believe me, when you wait 6
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A lot of people who program suck at it
Yep. And every one of them ends up on my team at some point.
Re:what bothered me about that article (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't read the comments but in my experience random folks learning just enough HTML and PHP to be dangerous is not a good thing.
It's a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, they know a little and are ignorant of what they don't know. Then real developers have to come in and clean up their mess (which is often more work than just building it from scratch).
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While not a coder (I know I can't code), I recently said the opposite of what you said in an interview. I told them I know what I know but I also know what I don't know.
I wasn't trying to be snarky. I was being honest about the limits of what I know. That said, since I know what I don't know, I make sure to learn or at least understand what I don't know so my knowledge continues to increase and (hopefully) help me become more desirable.
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learning just enough HTML and PHP to be dangerous is not a good thing
"Smattering", at least to my non-natively listening ears, somehow indicates the danger (think along the pictures of 'maluma' and 'takete').
CC.
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Not in my experience. The horrible code being written in the first place means that it was written for someone who wasn't willing to pay enough money to hire someone who actually knew how to do it right.
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And that doesn't even get near the cases where they already blew their budget, and now fixing it will not only cost too much, but take too long for it to be justified. So they'll "work on their next version" internally. And that wil be full of bugs and not work so well either.
The truth is that the reason these courses are booming is bec
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i think more coders is a GOOD thing. a planet of coders: what we could do!
Over my 25+ years as a system programmer/admin on just about every Unix (and, sigh, Windows) platform known, I've seen, and fixed, a LOT of code of questionable quality and shudder at your thought. I'm sure a "planet of coders" would bring forth some sort of Apocalypse. Hopefully, I'll be dead by then.
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That's exactly what the Unix greybeards said when Linux just got started: "Hundreds of amateur coders can never lead to a good thing".
And yet here we are, in 2012, and proprietary Unix is for all practical purposes dead.
Mart
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Re:what bothered me about that article (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but my RWOME (real-world old man experience) tells me that only about 10 to 15% of the populace has the ability to really understand basic logic, troubleshooting and decision structures. To us, coding and debugging is easy and natural, to most people it is a bunch of weird magic.
I have many intelligent friends who have taken classes on programming, classes on various aspects of computers, classes on networks, databases, etc. and they just don't "get it." They don't think like we do. Conversely, we don't think like they do. But then a world full of nothing but people like us would drive us all mad. That's the beauty of how we all get along.
And of course, the reason why we can make some good scratch doing easy crap like this.
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when someone tries to better themselves, and takes an interest in what you do, smile, and encourage them,
If someone wants to try to learn how to learn programming, and html and other stuff. Then great, more power to them.
But when someone says you need to do that in order to become a better blogger? Well then we as programmers have failed to do our job. If you want to do cutting edge stuff you need to understand the underlying technology (sort of the definition of cutting edge) But In order to create great content, you should use great tools. And know how to use those tools. You don't need to understand how t
I call b.s. (Score:2)
Where are these people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a boom? I've never met these people. The Internet doesn't seem to me to be any different from any other technology. When it is all the rage people are interested, but it then becomes commonplace and is taken for granted. The vast majority of people are content to know precisely zilch about how it works or what's going on inside.
How does an automatic transmission work? How does a television work? Hell, how does lever work? Hardly anybody out there walking around gives a flying fart about understanding those things.
I find it funny that this article is running now, when the "social network" is taking over how we use the Internet. Why would you create your own homepage or blog? You can just sign up for a Facebook or Linked-In, etc. Why would anybody other than professional devs look at code?
Re:Where are these people? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never met these people.
Try night classes at your local uni or college. Stuffed full of people learning Japanese for the F of it, learning civil war history for the F of it, and according to this article, at least some are learning basic html (and python?) for the F of it. This works for Vo Tech too, I am very handy with the lathe and mill, but I'm the worlds shittiest welder and I'd love to take some vo tech welding classes, not because I wanna get a new job at about 1/3 my current pay spending 40 hrs/wk welding, but because I like playing with fire and melting metal together and generally Fing around with stuff like that.
Hardly anybody out there walking around
Walk around somewhere else. You're not going to find interesting people at the local sports bar, or at the water cooler talking about the latest survivor episode, or walking around the mall. Sry about that. I once had a kind-of relationship with a chick who's idea of a hobby or interest was sun tanning, drinking, and watching tv, glad I ran like hell from that.
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You're not going to find interesting people at the local sports bar, or at the water cooler talking about the latest survivor episode, or walking around the mall.
Those are the places where you find the vast majority of people. I'm glad you agree with me.
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Why would anybody other than professional devs look at code?
Maybe after having been caught in a marketing trap?
CC.
Waste of time (Score:5, Insightful)
The real waste of time is having to hear sales pitches from people like this that don't realize that the problem isn't in the tooling, but in the problem to solve
Milking the gullible (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article:
[an investment manager] took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web, and WordPress. (...) She paid around $200 and saw it as an investment in her future.
This sort of courses are a form of scam that preys on gullible people, who have heard some news how some guy put up a website that he later sold for millions and now they want a piece of that pie. Yet, the hard truth is that those courses are in themselves useless and a waste of money. Sure, learning something is way better than not learning anything at all. Yet, who exactly believes that those gullible clients, like an investment banker with a course in HTML and WordPress, have all the technical know-how needed to put together a new facebook or twitter? They don't. They can't even put up a hello world app together, because they aren't even taught any programming language. These courses are good enough to put up a site on geocities, complete with an animated GIF informing that the site is "under construction", and to register a blog in WordPress.org. Yet, you think you are learning to program? Sorry to dissapoint you, but you aren't.
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a waste of money
There's really no such thing as a waste, there's just good prices and bad prices.
At around a tenth the price, she would be getting a fair deal for what she got. The adjunct prof probably only got $500 or so for teaching the whole semester... Somebody in the educational-industrial complex is skimming a lot of money off in these situations.
I'd trade her an hour of personal hands on computational tutoring for an hour of personal hands on investment and accounting tutoring, but I'm thinking $200 might be a bi
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Maybe I'm missing something?
Lot to learn (Score:2)
From the article:
I have to agree. I've been making web apps full-time for seven years, and I'm still learning. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Apache, Linu
Coding is the cool thing to do (Score:1)
While I commend many of these folks for tackling coding, I doubt many will stick with it. Chances are they like the many people I know who simply follow the latest "in" thing. Those books on coding will soon end up in the garage next to:
The golf clubs (everyone wanted to be the next Tiger Woods)
The homebrew kit (Fight the tasteless "macrobrews" sold by big breweries)
The boxes of trading statements (why work when you can sit at home and daytrade?)
X-sports gear (Xtreme s8ing, Xtreme sking, Xtreme chess....)
same thing happened in 1990s (Score:3)
Re:same thing happened in 1990s (Score:4, Interesting)
When "English majors" were turning into web-designers. I wonder how many survived into the 2000s?
At least one.
I spent a lot of nights and weekends learning over the last 19 years. Currently employed as a senior software developer, back on web apps the last couple of years, after a few years doing other sorts of programming. And I don't suck. (If I do say so myself.)
But then, I treated my college education as an education, not as job training. I learned how to think, and I learned how to learn. I received my degree in English the same year NCSA Mosaic was released, and spent the next 5 years learning (on my own) before I turned pro in the web development field.
It's really a matter of being smart and working hard. I can learn anything I want to learn, so long as the information is available.
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In 2006 I was working part-time at Wal*Mart and not making the rent. I had gone to two semesters of college, and both times had to drop out due to unforeseen circumstances compounded with no safety net (no family or friends to borrow money from, basically). I was given a chance as a Perl developer a few months later, and now make six figures and own my own business.
Of course, I had been fiddling around with Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, HTML, and JavaScript since 1999, afraid to take the plunge and turn "some
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I might have accidentally made it sound like "I make 6 figures from my own business," and for that I apologize. I work full-time as a contractor, and I also work part-time building video games for http://doublecluepon.com/ [doublecluepon.com] (my company).
So, short answer is I support myself (and hire contractors for my company) with real jobs until such time as my company can hire me on. We have decided against investors, due to creative/control reasons (few investors want to buy in with no say in what goes on). As of now we
HTML (Score:1)
says Sarah Henry, 39, an investment manager who took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web,
I'm a professional software engineer, and I don't know a 401k from a bond, but I just have to say that is so damn cute. She's learning HTML. ooooOOOOOoooo HyperText Markup Language! It's the BASIC LANGUAGE OF THE INTERNET you know. She can't make a site, but she can understand how the language functions in the Internet.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Oh. Man. I'm sorry. I know I'm being an ass here. But that's just SO ADORABLE! For some inexplicable reason I feel the need to haze some pre-froshes.
Sigh, oh, I know I kn
Here we go again (Score:2)
Smells like the height of the dot-com bubble when everybody and their brother read an HTML book and called themselves a programmer.
weird (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I keep reading that the IT field is going to face a shorting of ressources soon, because enlisting rates and numbers keep dwindling in the universities and colleges.
You only hear that garbage from managers trying to outsource or lower salaries, never from un/under/employed IT workers.
I'm sure my boss would agree there is a staggering shortage of veteran IT personnel with 31 years of general experience in computing, LAN/WAN telecom background, 19 years of linux experience since the SLS days, senior level routing and switching skills, electrical engineering microwave RF skills and experience, BS in CS in the hardcore curriculum track (compilers and shit track, not the "w
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go into wielding, you will make more money !
Great! Wait, what will I be wielding?
reminds me (Score:2)
Reminds me of a fresh out of college student I interviewed recently.
Me, what do you like to do?
I like web programming in dreamweaver.
Me, like java script, php etc?
I like making web pages with dreamweaver.
Me, do you program?
Sure html and that kind of thing.
Me, what is usually the first tag in a basic html document?
Blank Stare
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Pssst, the answer is <!DOCTYPE html>.
Many fields can benefit from a bit of scripting (Score:3)
I think it was Zed Shaw I saw somewhere pointing out it was all the career paths other than programming that could really benefit from a little scripting knowledge. Many small often repeated tasks in every profession that can be automated. Information that is checked regularly that can be put on the desktop with widget.
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Modded Slashvertisement :)
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All errors are expressed as exceptions.
Thank you. Now I have two reasons never to touch Python.
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and if you ever have to deal with spaghetti code, mistakes are easier to spot, because the code is forced to be formatted correctly.
Unless someone switched from tabs to series of spaces halfway through coding... Seen that in my first big project in python which I had to extend.
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... massive system run as excel macros.
I think I just had an aneurysm.
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Excel hatred comes from the poor bastards that have to mop up the mess when a massive system run as excel macros goes to hell.
Excel is a fine tool as long as it is used within it's practical limits.
Re:I was expecting an article about Python. (Score:4, Funny)
Simply because python is so damn cool it should be in the title of all articles no matter what the content is.
Not Flamebait (Score:2)
Regardless of whether or not I agree with the post, it was moderator malpractice to call it flamebait.
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Hmm. But if intent doesn't matter, then anything controversial is flamebait, and there's even less point to Internet conversations than there is already.