[res]

I was hoping we'd see another fine article from Jeff Atwood on the important distinction between coding and programming, something that is sometimes derided as largely pedantic, yet never fails to arouse interesting discussion.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a more blunt, standoffish interpretation of Peter Norvig's classic article on the long road to programming competence "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years." Jeff Atwood even references the article in this post, which I find disheartening, as Peter Norvig never once says something like "Don't even bother." Self-improvement is hardly a fruitless endeavor, and while not everyone is capable of writing good code, much less making a living off of it, there are a lot of wonderful things you could learn about yourself through such an undertaking. Plus, there are far less productive/interesting ways for people to spend what precious little time they have.