| People seem to think the difficulty in coding is the mechanical act of writing code A lot of people make the mistake you mentioned, but the author makes a different, common mistake that is, in my opinion, even worse: Programming is easy, after all: all you need to understand is conditions and repetition Programming can be boiled down to conditions and repetition as much as playing chess can be boiled down to moving the pieces around. That's why there's a difference between playing chess with your mates and being the world champion. Or, for a different analogy, try boiling down the act of driving a car to pressing pedals and wiggling the steering wheel. Yes, driving your personal car might be almost as simple as that, but driving a bus full of people or a race car goes quite a bit beyond that. What I'm trying to say is that there are different problem classes that require different skill levels. While it's perfectly okay to want to make it easier for people with lower skill levels to solve problem classes that can be solved -- I hope you will forgive me if I call that the low-hanging fruit -- the author's stated belief is an oversimplification that has repeatedly been proven incorrect. |