[ravenstine]

As someone who does code, I think most people would be worse off by learning to code.

It can be a rewarding job for someone who enjoys constantly solving crazy puzzles but, even for those who love to code, it can still be a miserable experience. Most people aren't particularly grabbed by the ability to control what a computer does the way that we "geeks" are. They would be bored out of their minds the second they have to do Fizz Buzz, which is why a lot of people never get off the ground with coding in the first place. The starting salary is barely livable; the national average is ~65k, and though I now make six figures, I started in the low 40ks. You won't get rich quick, perhaps at all, and unless you're talented or pick the right technologies, you might be stuck making mediocre pay while suffering the bad code of other learn-to-coders who are in it to strike it rich. After about 4 years, you begin to realize that your job is just like every other job, and that is to clean up the mess made by someone else. Unless you're part of the <10% that actually builds brand new stuff, your purpose is to be frequently astonished and make sense of the chaos. How fun.

Some people enjoy all of that, but it's a fallacy to believe that anyone could do it if they _just learned_. More people aren't coding(or choosing unemployment over coding) for the same reason that I and many of us didn't learn to become aerospace engineers, or CEOs, or HVAC technicians. Most of us probably wouldn't be that good at those things because we don't all have the drive for them, and I don't think that having more people who are mediocre at their jobs is a good thing for anyone.

[bagacrap]

65k is barely liveable now? What percent of the US do you think makes over that amount?

[ravenstine]

You're right. You can live on that amount, perhaps well depending on how and where you situate yourself. It's basically middle-income. How far that income will get you in a place like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York is another thing.

[jpindar]

And sitting at a desk in a heated/air conditioned office is not just like every other job - especially those that involve cleaning.

But I agree that if you don't enjoy programming, you're probably not going to be especially good at it.