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Comment by rileyphone | Hacker News Reader

Me too, and I definitely agree that it is time to move past thinking in "languages" to a more holistic view of programming systems. The fact that as of now, only ~1% of people can access programming and wield the magic of the computer is a tragedy akin to the comparable levels of literacy in the medieval era. At the present, there seems to be a minor renaissance of thought along these lines stemming back to the pioneers of the field (McCarthy, Engelbart, Kay, etc). Everyone has a different take as to what the answer is, but I think "let 1000 flowers bloom" is the best way to find a solution to a complex and largely unknown problem such as software. Personally, I'm afraid that if we fail, the means of programming will become gated behind AIs and society will continue in its trance-like state of passivity instead of creative expression.

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> The fact that as of now, only ~1% of people can access programming and wield the magic of the computer is a tragedy akin to the comparable levels of literacy in the medieval era.

I don't know why programmers think this way. We don't expect everyone to be a doctor, a botanist, a novelist, or a musician but for some reason we think anyone can be a programmer. That's just not the case -- programming is a skill like any other -- it takes some natural inclination, some training, and a lot of practice. Just like any other skill. A programming language is to a programmer what an instrument is to a musician.

No, but we expect everybody to know reading, writing, and arithmetic. Programming may be more intrinsically difficult than these, but most of the reason it's so hard today is because of solvable problems that beginners run into, to the point of half of expertise is just knowing to avoid all these pitfalls. The downside of the open source developer ecosystem today is that putting it all together is typically a painful process, which is what Replit is aiming to solve. There is a world of difference between a good IDE and a bad one for a beginner, and a lot of that comes down to integration with the language.

Anyways, there's a reason programming should be made more widely accessible - it develops thinking skills and rationality when you learn it, as Mindstorms pointed out. Between the anecdotes in the book and things like [0], I think it's a travesty that we aren't pursuing this to its fullest extent, and instead try to teach children Python or JavaScript, two decent languages for software development but not exactly forgiving with beginners.

[0] https://medium.com/@stevekrouse/goodbye-seymour-cb712757264f

When I was a kid we also computer class were programming was taught. And music class. And drama. And woodworking.

And like with these other things, you can make getting into them easier. With music, children start with simple instruments that no professional ever uses. And it's the same with programming, there are plenty of easier environments for children. But if you want to make programmers and you want to make musicians, eventually they have to use the real thing. My own son jumped straight into the deep end of Unity development knowing nothing because he wants to build something real. I neither encouraged or discouraged that environment and it's pretty unforgiving.

I don't think the solvable problems you speak of as are as solvable as you think they are. Also making software development out to be special both in terms of it's benefit to thinking skills and rationality and how it's merely some tools away from being professionally approachable to the masses is totally unfounded.

I think they're saying we should make the tools to program more accessible and allow people to play music easier. Sorta like an electric keyboard vs a grand piano.

We already have those tools for just about every age range. But like with music, just because you can play twinkle twinkle little star doesn't mean you're going to be able to join the orchestra. And if you do, you're going to need to able to play that grand piano.

We will have to contend with the last bit regardless. Programming requires attention to detail and tolerance for tedium, the erosion of which will only continue as AI grows.

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