> What I learned was that programming is not really about knowledge or skill but simply about patience, or maybe obsession. Programmers are people who can endure an endless parade of tedious obstacles.
This captures the reason I'm optimistic about AI-assisted programming.
The learning curve for getting started programming is horribly steep - and it's not because it's hard, it's because it's frustrating. You have to sweat through six months of weird error messages and missing semicolons before you get to the point where it feels like you're actually building things and making progress.
Most people give up. They assume they're "not smart enough" to learn to program, when really they aren't patient enough to make it through all of that muck.
I think LLMs dramatically impact that initial learning curve. I love the idea that many more people will be able to learn basic programming - I think every human being deserves to be able to use computers to automate tedious repetitive tasks in their lives.
This captures the reason I'm optimistic about AI-assisted programming.
The learning curve for getting started programming is horribly steep - and it's not because it's hard, it's because it's frustrating. You have to sweat through six months of weird error messages and missing semicolons before you get to the point where it feels like you're actually building things and making progress.
Most people give up. They assume they're "not smart enough" to learn to program, when really they aren't patient enough to make it through all of that muck.
I think LLMs dramatically impact that initial learning curve. I love the idea that many more people will be able to learn basic programming - I think every human being deserves to be able to use computers to automate tedious repetitive tasks in their lives.