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I've been programming since high school. I remember the excitement of buying magazines like compute or Commodore Users Ahoy! and typing in the code in them.
And doing that taught me how to program. Now, into my 13th year as a professional sw developer, I can always spot the commodore user in my team. It turns out they're the ones that can grok problem solving. I don't know, it's like that Joel Spolski's observation about people missing the part of the brain that understands pointers.
I also remember a quote from Isaac Asimov, comparing the printing press and computers. People couldn't read, so they needed professional readers and writers. So, books were rare. Then the printing press came along and people learned to read and write. His point was that as long as common people don’t write their own programs, a similar revolution will not happen.
