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Comment by ericHosick | Hacker News Reader

> The difficulty in programming isn't the mechanical act of writing code;

I look at coding and programming as different things.

Programming is the critical thinking aspects of developing software and a skill that everyone should master: starting with children.

The act of writing code, and more specifically using frameworks designed with the intent of being coded against, is unnecessarily difficult.

I've always spent more time fighting with bad frameworks than I do implementing desired behavior.

Once I figure out the peculiarities of a compiler, I'm good to go. I can code fast. But, getting to that point takes a long time. It is especially difficult for people learning to program when they have to learn to code (edit: at the same time).

Software development is fundamentally broken and it frustrates me to no end.

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> Programming is the critical thinking aspects of developing software and a skill that everyone should master: starting with children.

That's pretty much the opposite of my point: programmers want everyone to think like programmers (per your definition). In my opinion, this kind of "critical" thinking is not necessarily a positive: there are other ways to think critically that don't map well to programming. This seems like the typical HN view that everyone should think like I do. Some people don't get math, or symbolic logic, and that's not stopping them being a value to society.

Looking at your profile, it seems like you have a horse in this race. Personally, Visual looks very slick, but I don't think visual representations are really appropriate for programming beyond toys (or maybe data modelling, but not procedural programming). It gets very hard to lay out a large program in 2D space, and the toolbox required to enumerate all the built-ins and libraries seems like a bit of a handicap compared to just typing them.

My sentence was poorly written. I wanted to say "Programming is the critical thinking aspects of developing software and critical thinking is a skill that everyone should master: starting with children."

I don't want everyone to think like programmers. I want programmers to think like everyone else and hope some day that everyone can be programmers.

> It seems like you have a horse in this race.

Ya. We do. We've been working on a new development methodology and from that a visual object language and framework. Initially we coded against the framework but have found that you can visually represent usage of the framework equally well.

> really appropriate for programming beyond toys (or maybe data modeling, but not procedural programming)

Funny you say that. I also agree if you are using traditional approaches to software development (aka procedure programming). However, our framework does not use procedural programming per-se in that it has no paramaterized procedures/methods/functions/sub-routines.

I think you should keep in mind that the distinction you make between "programming" and "coding" is not shared by most programmers. I acknowledge that the things you're describing exist, and are distinct, but those are not the words I use for them. To me, "programming" and "coding" are synonymous. I point this out because you may run into confusion if you discuss these concepts with others, and rely on using your own words.

> rely on using your own words

People used to say they would "program their VCR".

Also, I didn't in any way mean to imply that they were definitely different. I did say "I look at coding and programming as different things" as opposed to "Coding and programming are different things".

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