When I started asking for help with programming, I had some idea that it would be similar to like... asking for help with a dance move, or how to do a thing in photoshop. Sure, there's different techniques, but not a *lot* of them; ask an expert, get a fast answer. 1/
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but when asking people who are really good at programming a question about 'how to do this thing,' a surprising amount of the time they *don't know*, and have to go google it. And when I ask multiple people, they often give me radically different answers. 2/
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I think I thought programming was much narrower than it was, but it's actually extremely broad; even if you're familiar with the same language, you might not be with the same library, or the *type* of thing I'm trying to do. It's a huge landscape with many right answers.
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Maybe this is very obvious, but I didn't know that being a good programmer doesn't mean having all the vocabulary words memorized, but rather having a good grasp of grammar and syntax that allows you to do more efficient 'figuring out.' The answers are often not preloaded!
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absolutely - i’ve always thought of the core skill of programming as being about figuring how to describe what you want to do. as you get into it you learn specific terms/phrases which enables you to find more specific answers/examples/libraries
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You just got to the cool part!
Lots of false impressions that cuz programming is math related there is only one right way, but it’s a lot closer to writing, there are many ways to express!
Even something as simple as multiplication can be done many ways
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Programming is a craft and an art. There are lots of ways a carpenter can build a table, and so it is with writing software.
There are certain things one has to learn - best practices, for instance - but a lot of it comes from creativity and artistic vision.
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Teaching programming is tough. If you start with something practical, it's easy to become immediately overwhelmed. But if you start from first principles, students will be extremely bored and have a difficult time connecting what they're learning to anything that matters.
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Yeah programming is fundamentally about doing new things. Once you know how to do something you put it in a box and it's automated forever.
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It's more like... If I ask you "what's the word that communicates concept X?" There's no one answer, it's imperfect, some are better than others, it's a miracle it works at all when it does
That's how I feel about writing code
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