What makes programming so hard? Can non-programmers invent algorithms?

And organic chemistry isn't hard?

Programming is a profession. Professions are hard. That's what makes them professions.

If it was easy, then people would just do it as part of other activities, and there would be no specialization worth of the title profession. We don't think of typing in URLs as a profession, or spell checking documents, but we do think of graphic design or architecture as professions.

Programmers are operating close to the limit of human capability, just as other professionals are. Only a few people can do it well because it's a talent which is unequally distributed, just like being able to draw.

As for why this particular activity pushes that limit? The hardest part of programming is building mental models of non-existent objects which have no natural analogs. It's dealing with the "virtual."

Its all about motivation. 20% of his students genuinely wanted to know how computers work. They were naturally curious. Curiosity is what drives an educational process. Good teachers try to get children curious, fascinated by something, and then very effectively explain how the phenomena works.

I hated physics in middle school, but in high school I got lucky and met the most amazing physics teacher the world had seen. That changed not only my grades, but my perspective on technology, world and life.

Part of the problem is that we usually teach in procedural style -- but this requires learning the MOST abstractions to do anything useful. Procedural style is based on variables, loops, conditionals, and side effects. Functional style is just based on function calls and conditionals; this makes it far easier to explain.

A larger part of the problem, I suspect, is that people are just not interested in the process of programming -- it's the product they want. The first thing you'll notice when you try to teach someone to program (in the normal case) is that they are focused to a fault on making the program work. This is the same problem that keeps people stuck to a single language: "well, it works." You need a genuine interest in the journey, not just the destination, to really be able to wrap your mind around the skill of programming. That's what gives someone the ability to intuitively understand how computers "work."

You wouldn't try to drive cross-continent if you're only interested in what's on the other side -- you'd just fly there, or take a train or bus or something. Likewise, if you're not interested in how a program does what it does, you should just pay someone who does care to do it.

Learning to program means mastering lots of new abstractions, becoming comfortable with them, and being able to use them. And I know that if I encounter too many new abstractions at a time, my mind simply shuts down. This happens each time I try to learn Haskell for instance. I'm following a tutorial, and suddenly I encounter this:

    parseNumber = liftM (Number . read) $ many1 digit

And then I've hit a road block. This can be solved by better teaching materials. Most education in general is simply bad and terribly inefficient compared to what it could be (but I'm working on it...)

Another thing is attitude. Everyone programmer encounters really hard or confusing problems all the time - the trick is being really stubborn, and never give up. That doesn't come naturally to most people.

Finally, most things we learn, we learn by imitating others. Our brains are hardwired to learn that way, but it's not very helpful for learning to program.

Some people are good at constructing mental models from a symbolic or linguistic description. Most need help constructing the mental model. That's why Montessori math education includes so many hands-on materials.

DrScheme has a stepper that helps visualize expression evaluation. I think that can go a long way toward helping "non-programmers" learn.

Personally I think there might be something genetic. The same people that get computer science are good at a lot of other things that folks that don't understand programming don't seem to be great at. Look at Calculus or Physics. 20% of the students just get it, most of the class needs to memorize formulas and 20% of the people just don't get it at all.

The best programmers are generally those who have learned it at a young age. Maybe that's the best time for the brain to pick it up.