Barrier to entry into programming

14 November 2017

The barrier to entry into programming is low. Much lower than a bachelor degree.

There are two possible conclusions to that statement:

1. We can say that a low barrier to entry prevents programming from becoming a fully fledged engineering field. Practitioners of an established field, like civil or aerospace engineering, share a common solid education on how to build complex projects.
2. We can say that programming is a universal right. Programming should be as accessible as reading and writing prose. In fact, programming isn’t accessible enough. Further work must be done to make programming approachable for whoever wants to explore and express dynamic behavior with a computer. Whether or not a programmer needs a domain specific education is up to the requirements of the project they use programming for.

Links:

• The quote that triggered this note is from a Hacker News comment, 2017. The original thread is about James Somers’ essay on software engineering, The Coming Software Apocalypse. See previous note Programmers love to write code.