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Jake Edge writes at LWN.net that there is a myth that programming skill is somehow distributed on a U-shaped curve and that people either "suck at programming" or that they "rock at programming", without leaving any room for those in between. Everyone is either an amazing programmer or "a worthless use of a seat" which doesn't make much sense. If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution. According to Edge this belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution is both "dangerous and a myth". "This myth sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. It is actively harmful in that is keeping people from learning programming, driving people out of programming, and it is preventing most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see." If the only options are to be amazing or terrible, it leads people to believe they must be passionate about their career, that they must think about programming every waking moment of their life. If they take their eye off the ball even for a minute, they will slide right from amazing to terrible again leading people to be working crazy hours at work, to be constantly studying programming topics on their own time, and so on.
The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday May 06 2015, @03:03PM
Seems to me that there's two kinds of people in my office. Those who really know what they're doing, and those who can barely type. Yesterday one of my coworkers told me he had never really used a computer at all until he was in college. Meanwhile I started teaching myself C++ in grade school. I think I was doing the very simplest BASIC programs when I was about five years old (taught by my older brother in that case).
Programming is a pretty easy thing to learn by yourself. At least the basics. Lots of tools and resources available for free to anyone with access to a PC, which in the developed world is going to be nearly everyone. Worst case you learn at school or the public library. So if you're interested in technology and engineering and that sort of thing, you're likely to start learning the basics of programming very, very early. The other people who go into programming tend to be those who decide sophomore year of college that Comp Sci might be a decent degree to choose. At that point they're already as much as a decade behind. There's your ability gap.
Of course, purely self-taught programmers are likely to be missing a lot, have some bad habits and poor understanding of certain concepts (Never quite figured out C++ pointers and objects on my own)...but just having that grasp of what programming *is*, knowing the basic syntax, and having a bit of experience and a lot of mistakes all seems to be a pretty significant advantage.
And that gap doesn't seem to narrow later in life; if anything it continues to expand. My coworkers spend their free time watching/playing football or working on their cars or whatever...meanwhile I go home and work on my network, build new servers, or write new software. For some people it *is* a passion, and those people are naturally going to develop the skill far more than someone who only does it for their job. This is true of any skill, but some more than others. Programming is one where it matters more, because the technology is always changing so there's always more to learn.