Programming is Hard: Get over it

The challenge is that scripting languages like ColdFusion (and before them, RAD tools like Visual Basic) allowed people without programming experience to get computers to do cool things like display information from a database onto a screen. However, as anyone who has tried to manage a typical VB4, ColdFusion or PHP app knows, having the ability to get a database talking to a web page is not the same as having the ability to architect a scalable or maintainable web application. Most people given the correct tools could build some kind of physical shelter on their own. Only a handful could design and build a 100 story high-rise. Same with programming.

This isn’t to say that someone without a formal CompSci education shouldn’t be coding complex apps. I learnt a lot more about programming by hacking games when I was 12 than I ever did in college and when I left college back in 1992, OO was not at all mainstream so I have had to learn OOP from books in the evening – the same as any self taught scripter. It does mean however that you should consider learning to program broadly equivalent to learning any other professional skill that takes a solid thousand hours of self-study to master (and that doesn’t include day to day coding – that is time spent learning and mastering new skills).

I don’t think anyone would reasonably read a “Dummies guide to architecture” and then expect to be able to successfully architect a high-rise, so I don’t think it is reasonable to complain at the effort required to learn OO programming. If you’re coding simple apps you don’t need to learn OO, and if you’re coding complex apps you just have to accept that you’re moving from a relatively unskilled job to a much more highly skilled one and go dig out that copy of Design Patterns and start learning!