alt Hacker NewsI think you are underestimating how hard it is for average joe to learn programming basics. I remember a fellow in high school that just could not accept that = in programming is assignment not an equation (like in high school math)
Replies
repstosb • today at 3:41 PM
You went to high school with Niklaus Wirth?
dapperdrake • today at 4:32 PM
This is one of the few mistakes K&R made going from BCPL to C.
I'd like to believe I have an inkling, having done a fair bit of teaching.
Still, imagine how hard other skills are to acquire. How much civil engineering can you learn in two weeks? How much violin playing? But you could absolutely get basic grasps on a general purpose programming language. With something specialized like Unity or Excel you would get tons of useful output.
The hurdle around assignment operator is as old as symbolic languages. That's why legends such as Niklaus Wirth wanted to use another operator, ":=", a notation that is still being used.
Anyway, it can be a hurdle, but one I find that most people get over pretty quickly.