[BryanB55]

I've been hearing this argument a lot lately. Are you suggesting that if I wanted to learn to code it would take me decades to be able to build anything of value? To me learning to code is just like learning any other skill. Sure you wont be good at it the first few months you start but that is what practice is for. I don't see why in a year or two you wouldn't be able to build something of value. If it really took 10 years to be able to build anything useful I doubt there would be that many coders. I can't really think of any skill that takes 10 years to become good at.

[crazygringo]

Umm... piano? violin? lawyer? doctor? mathematician? I could go on...

After a year or two of learning to code, you can build things of minimal value. If they're of any reasonable complexity, though, they'll probably be terribly structured and difficult to maintain. To truly become effective, it really does take many years, with lots of things that can really only be learned by experience.

[Retric]

You can become a medic in a few months which is not a doctor but still able to save peoples lives in a wide range of circumstances. As to musical instruments learning to play the bugle call takes a while but not decades. You can learn some basic piano songs to play at parity's fairly rapidly assuming a reasonable level of dedication.

As for math even something as simple as being able to make change quickly is both useful and in demand.

[Mgccl]

I guess it depend on how one sees something to have value. There are mathematicians only consider research level mathematics have value. There are some subfield of mathematics like algebraic geometry that take years for a math grad student to even understand the language, and takes even longer to produce research paper with value.