Learn to code? Ha! To excel, heck even to have modest success and anything resembling job satisfaction in software development you have to have the knack. Training can only take you so far. If you don’t have “it” you can’t learn it. Development is a creative endeavor. Authoring software is similar to working on a commissioned piece of art. There are guidelines to follow, constraints, but it is still a creative act.
“Learn to code? Ha! To excel, heck even to have modest success and anything resembling job satisfaction in software development you have to have the knack. Training can only take you so far. If you don’t have “it” you can’t learn it. Development is a creative endeavor. Authoring software is similar to working on a commissioned piece of art. There are guidelines to follow, constraints, but it is still a creative act.”
totally. As a paid teaching assistant earning my way towards a Masters Degree in Computer Science, I *TAUGHT* undergraduate beginning coding, and i could easily divide the students in all of my classes into three categories:
1. Those that would NEVER get it, no matter what. (about 50% of the total)
2. Those that could get it good enough to pass the tests, but who would never be proficient coders. (about 45% of the total)
3. Those to whom computer languages and computer programming was a revelation, and to whom i ascribed as having what i call the “programming gene” (about 5% of the total)
As to myself, as an undergraduate taking two years of general engineering courses prior to picking an engineering specialty, one of the classes was beginning FORTRAN, and to me, that course was truly an epiphany, and at the end of the two years i switched my major to Computer Science and have never looked back since.