I don't think its the case that a really simple human can learn to code.
People always think this about their own trade. But let me assure you that I am dumb as shit and a pretty decent programmer as well. I've taught programming to beginner adults, who were coming out of prison or the military, and out of hundreds I ran across maybe a handful that truly truly were not ever going to be able to learn it to competence.
The main skill at play from my experience is comfort with the state of not having a clue, and tolerance for frustration. That's an uncomfortable emotional zone for work; people will frequently abandon the pursuit. But that doesn't mean they can't learn it.
It's like playing a violin or something: you could, anyone could if they put the hundreds of hours in. Who does put those hours in may be a self-selecting group, but it doesn't mean there's anything inherent in the skill itself that limits who can learn it.
Programming is not special knowledge or technique wise. It’s having a super high tolerance to frustration and somewhat lesser to being comfortable not knowing a solution.
You're right that having the capacity to program isn't about having special knowledge, but it's not about tolerance to frustration. It's about the ability to think in abstract terms and being able to mentally process an abstract mental model consistently.
Even a person with far below average intelligence can do many things in physical space with enough training. They can be shown how to set a table for a fancy banquet, can physically understand what a knife/fork/spoon/plate/napkin/cup are, their relationship in physical space, and eventually learn to set a table as instructed with enough training and practice.
But there's no amount of training that works to help a dumb person understand abstract problems in programming. Things like understanding a variable represents something, you have many variables to keep track of that all represent different things, and working through the logic of even a simple function in a program that changes those variables are beyond dumb people. I wish this wasn't the case, but it's reality.
giraffe_lady is being too humble if she's a decent coder and genuinely thinks she's dumb. There is no such thing as a dumb coder: it's a complete contradiction. In reality, I'd bet that almost everybody on HN who seriously uses this site to discuss ideas is at least in the top 15% of IQ for their population group.
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People always think this about their own trade. But let me assure you that I am dumb as shit and a pretty decent programmer as well. I've taught programming to beginner adults, who were coming out of prison or the military, and out of hundreds I ran across maybe a handful that truly truly were not ever going to be able to learn it to competence.
The main skill at play from my experience is comfort with the state of not having a clue, and tolerance for frustration. That's an uncomfortable emotional zone for work; people will frequently abandon the pursuit. But that doesn't mean they can't learn it.
It's like playing a violin or something: you could, anyone could if they put the hundreds of hours in. Who does put those hours in may be a self-selecting group, but it doesn't mean there's anything inherent in the skill itself that limits who can learn it.
Didn't you answer yourself? Having a high tolerance for frustration.
That's surprisingly rare from my personal experience.
Also, I don't tolerate frustration on a personal level as much as I would like but I'm really good at tolerating computers. Weird.
Yup. This.
Programming is not special knowledge or technique wise. It’s having a super high tolerance to frustration and somewhat lesser to being comfortable not knowing a solution.
You're right that having the capacity to program isn't about having special knowledge, but it's not about tolerance to frustration. It's about the ability to think in abstract terms and being able to mentally process an abstract mental model consistently.
Even a person with far below average intelligence can do many things in physical space with enough training. They can be shown how to set a table for a fancy banquet, can physically understand what a knife/fork/spoon/plate/napkin/cup are, their relationship in physical space, and eventually learn to set a table as instructed with enough training and practice.
But there's no amount of training that works to help a dumb person understand abstract problems in programming. Things like understanding a variable represents something, you have many variables to keep track of that all represent different things, and working through the logic of even a simple function in a program that changes those variables are beyond dumb people. I wish this wasn't the case, but it's reality.
giraffe_lady is being too humble if she's a decent coder and genuinely thinks she's dumb. There is no such thing as a dumb coder: it's a complete contradiction. In reality, I'd bet that almost everybody on HN who seriously uses this site to discuss ideas is at least in the top 15% of IQ for their population group.
The frustration part is about how different (than a person) computers make you think and how unforgiving computers are to even the smallest errors.