[npsimons]

Sigh. I think Atwood really should have entitled his post "please write better software." Everyone seems to be trying to ad hom Atwood by shouting "elitist!" when all I think he wanted to do was discourage people from learning to program if all they were going to do was release shitty code. Trust me, as a maintenance programmer, I can sympathize. The world doesn't need more programmers; it needs better programmers.

My take on "Please Don't Learn to Code": http://hardcorehackers.com/cgi-bin/blosxom/2012/05/15#please

Edit: Yes, this is my interpretation, and it's one way to look at it. Zed's is another (inflammatory) way of looking at it that reads in (wrongly) a whole lot more. I think Atwood is correct: for some people, learning to code is a waste of time. But no one should be discouraged from learning anything, ever.