What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it?
What are the craziest misconceptions you’ve heard about programming from people not familiar with it?
As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren't as familiar with it. It doesn't happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.
- I'm sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.
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That there's something inherently special about me that makes me able to program....
... Yes...patience and interest.
The things that make me a good programmer:
- I read error messages
- I put those errors in Google
- I read the results that come up
Even among my peers, that gives me a leg up apparently.
Don't underestimate what having the necessary intuitions do engage with mathematics does for you. A significant portion of the population is incapable of that, mostly because we have a very poor way of teaching it as a subject.
This is very fair. Math has always come fairly easily to me. So math intuition plays a part in my interest and ability to learn to program.
I think most people, even smart people, assume they couldn't do it though because I'm some kind of genius, which only a few programmers actually are.
Agreed. Few geniuses, it’s mostly driven people with slightly above average intelligence and a good bit of opportunity.
Funny you should say that as I was thinking that the idea that math has anything to do with programming is the biggest misconprehension I encounter.
Hey we did all sort of crazy shit with linear algebra, vectors matrices and shit in college programmlng. Now I sometimes do some basic arithmetic in work life. E.g:
n = n + 1
Sometimes, very rarely, I tell my squad that today's our unlucky day and we're actually going to have to do math to the problem.
I can't do math for shit and I failed formal logic in uni. I'm not built for math. I just.... Don't care and can't make myself care. I've taught myself python over the past year and amd have become fairly comfortable with bash. Which has weirdly helped me with python?
Anyway I'm not very good at either yet. And there are huge gaps in my knowledge. But I'm learning every day.
I've done it on my own, and dove right into the fucking deep end with it which is probably the hardest way. But if I can do it then anyone can. You just need to want it. Why do I want it? I have no idea. If go crazy doing it for a living.
Learning more languages always helps understanding ime. I’d recommend learning C.
Learning python isn't jumping in at the deep end. Learning assembly or C would be the deep end. Also programming has little to do with maths anymore, and the maths you use for programming isn't the kind most people are taught in school.
You're misunderstanding my use of the phrase.
I'm using it in the context or immersing in something you have no understanding of. I just dove right into and skipped most of the intro type stuff.
You're using the phrase to talk about relative complexity / difficulty not how I've usually heard it used but it makes sense.
Like. Most people learning python start with hello world. I spent too many hours learning to own hot encode a 500gb dataset of reddit porn and tweak stylegan 3 a bit to train it on porn. None of which is remarkable objectively but there were a lot of very basic things I needed to learn to finish the task. That's what I mean by jumping in the deep end - throwing yourself into something you are probably poorly or il equipped for and just figuring it out as you go.
There is a deep end of coding complexity of course, but, different kind of deep end.
I met a friend of a friend recently and they asked what I did and I told them I'm a computer systems engineer and they were like "oh you must be smart" and I was like "I like to think that I'm good at what I do, but trust me. I am not smart"
Like stoly said above, I think programmers are probably slightly above average intelligence overall, so don't sell yourself short there. But yeah. We're not geniuses