I used to be solidly on team "anyone can code." That changed when I talked to my therapist about it.
ME: I'm a big believer in neuroplasticity. I...
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I liken it to Anton Ego's explanation of the motto in the Pixar film Ratatouille: "Anyone can cook".
"Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."
And, of course, everyone has their own "genius", too, as you alluded to. Not everyone will excel at coding, but everyone has something of equal importance they can excel at.
I really like this point. For some people the genius is coding and for some its QA and breaking the code. You need both to have a quality product. All around things I wish my friends could understand when they want to learn to code.
This is similarly false. It's something we say to make ourselves feel better. And it is very obviously false. I am better at coding than most coders I know, but am I the Michael Jordan or the Tiger Woods of coding? Hell, no. And I never will be.
I will never be the Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods of anything. Talents are not, no matter how badly we want them to be, evenly distributed.
A wiser approach, I think, is: find something you enjoy and can do reasonably well and then do it as well as feels right to you. Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop desiring to be great. Be good enough. Then enjoy your life.
The things I do make me happy. I do them well enough. I waste exactly zero time worrying about how much better others may be. Actually, when I find such people, I happily learn what I can from them.
The constant pressure on everyone to be "great" when by definition only a tiny minority can be is the cause of much frustration, pain, and suffering. And pointlessly.
I explained this in an essay a few years ago. I stand by it.
Well, I never said you'd be as good at your talent as someone else is at theirs. But you can still excel. It's not a competition.
Sorry if I misread you. But I am not sure that everyone can excel at something. I don't see any evidence for it. It just seems like something we tell ourselves to feel better.
But it's only an issue if we think that "excelling" is some praise worthy goal. I question why we need to excel at anything. Sure, if you are doing something (e.g., surgery) where lives are at stake, then maybe. But isn't good enough by definition good enough?
Excelling at anything takes a huge amount of time and effort (and often money). What makes it worth it? Ego? Pride?
This is a very Western capitalist mentality meant, I think, to get the most out of laborers. Many societies even in the modern world have a much more laid back approach to living. What exactly is it that we are rushing to? Why the urgency? Why the pressure to excel?
And isn't the definition of excel "to be distinguishable by superiority : surpass others"? Why this need to surpass others? To be superior? Why the constant comparison? And if excel means to "surpass others", then how is it not a competition?
So there's this weird irony that saying "everyone can excel at something" appears to be promoting equality and inclusion, but then the word "excel" implies competition and superiority. Odd.
But maybe it's just not the right word for what you mean.
I don’t think most people use “excel” strictly to mean “by comparison with others in the field.” To me the word is about forward progress and suitability to a niche. My five year old kid excels at building Mega Bloks. Is he better at it than anyone else? I dunno. But it’s his thing. He’s having a great time and building things he’s proud of, and I’m enjoying watching him.
Everyone can do something like that. If it’s not “excel” by strict definition, that’s okay.
What I’m saying is, I think you’re both right.
Ah! A postmodernist, I see. :-)
You’re (not) wrong. 😉
☝️ YES. Perfectly said.
When I hear "Anyone can code" I also hear the line from the Pixar film "Anyone can cook".
I've personally never believed that anyone can do it, as I've seen and experienced how different people have different mindset which in a way inhibits them from getting into coding or anything close to it.
Maybe the never generations are going to be a bit different as they where born with technology...
Whenever I explain this to people, they tend to think that I have some God complex, but in my opinion, people need to learn what they are good and comfortable with. People have different talents.
An anecdote from my life: I've met one of my best friends while majoring computer science. While concepts just clicked for me, it took him tremendous amounts of time to get them. It was really demotivating for him, as he always had that mentality that everybody could learn anything. After failing first year, he accepted it and now he is an amazing micro-biologist.
From my view, it is part of life to figure out what your talents and passions are. Acceptance is sometimes a big part of it and denying yourself what you're really good at can sometimes block happiness.
Agreed. I believe it’s not bragging to say “I’m good at X” and it’s not fishing for compliments to say “I’m bad at Y”. If you’re being honest and upfront about your skills and challenges, that benefits everyone.
This reminds me of an argument I had with my employers when I was teaching web development "bootcamps" a decade ago. They essentially accepted anyone with the money to pay for the course. And they told them all, "you can learn to code". Worse they said that they could learn enough to get a job in 12 (or 18) weeks.
As a teacher with more than forty years experience and a coder for roughly thirty, I can say with certainty that not everyone can learn to code. Coding is a very specific skill that involves an ability to think both very abstractly and very logically. And an ability to both analyze and synthesize.
Some people can't code at all, no matter how much effort they put into learning. Those people got screwed by the bootcamps. They spent $10k+ and gave months of their time and endured endless frustration and in the end, after a fruitless job search, they gave up. They never should have been accepted in the first place.
Then there was another group that might be able to memorize enough and learn a few patterns, and they might survive in some commodity coding role, i.e., mostly configuration and the same thing over and over again. But they will never write quality bespoke code.
So I commend you on your realization that just because something came easily to you, it is not automatically doable by everyone. I'm never going to be a dancer or a singer or a poet. (For a small donation I will sign a document promising never to try.) But I can code. It just comes naturally.
Know when to pivot. Do what you're good at.
I actually wrote an essay on this recently.
And even within software development domain, different people are good at different aspects.
Coders are analogous to plumbers sweating out with elbow grease and spanners.
Q: what are some of the elbow "greases" of the software realm?
I think it is fair to list out some of those and post them.
I don't see lots of that.
Instead, there's a sense of software being cool with the perks of high salaries, free food plus working from home, etc.
No one talking about 60hrs work week and mental and psychological agonizing at 3 am over bugs or support rotations and the dreaded SPRINT standup daily.
Anyone can bake a cake alright. But to really bake a sumptuous one consistently is another story.
Same with coding.
None of this is normal and someone needs to say that. I've worked some 60 hour weeks in my career, but not a lot—fewer than 10 in as many years. I don't think I've ever been up at 3 AM fixing a bug. I've done support rotations, but they're usually uneventful.
You're right about standup, though. It is a daily thing with a lot of teams and it always goes way too long.
Interesting point of view. I do think everyone has different skills, personalities, and mindsets that contributes to a "I'm not getting this!".
How would you incorporate someone's interest or enjoyment in coding? Do you think that can have an effect in the person's ability to code?
I really like this realization you've laid out here, Isaac. Coding is not meant for everyone, I totally agree. We all have our set of skills and quirks that makes us unique and I wish for everyone that they can find a field where they can put them to use 🙌
I disagree with becoming a CTO or even a Project Manager as an alternative to keep improving your coding skills, though. If software development and coding are not your cup of tea, I recommend that you avoid being a technical lead in any of their forms 😵
This comes from my experience in both watching inexperienced bosses lead teams to their doom and being in charge of developers that exceed my skill. Sadly, devs won't respect bosses that can't keep up with the team. The solution is not to hire worse devs, but to have a better CTO or PM. So, even if bosses are not coding all the time, they should be reading, learning and keeping their skills up to date. I've found that this kind of technical leads are the ones that foster teams where everyone wants to work at 🙂
I’ve never had a project manager or CTO that could code at the level of the team (at least not in the stack we were working in). Some of them have been really good, others not so much. So maybe there’s some experiential bias there on my part.
I feel the “anyone can code” idea (now grown into a meme) comes from (suspicious) sources, such as:
As others say the issue is not about who can code, it’s about who chooses to and can make a living in software development. I can dance … but have no ability (or interest) in trying to make a living dancing.
Thank you for saying this! I to have tried to tow the "anyone can code" line and while technically it's true (just like anyone can play basketball) it does not mean anyone can make a living doing it.