Coding matters: Dentist in a day

Cartoon of a frightened patient in a dentist's chair with the dentist wielding a huge device.

Imagine that a company offered a course for people to "qualify" as a dentist in only one month - or one week or 24 hours. After all, Google already has all the answers, so you don't need to learn that much.

Then imagine walking into your new dentist's consulting rooms. You look around and see that his/her/its qualification came from that company.

Would you let that dentist use a drill in your mouth?

Nope. Not a chance. You can see those old-fashioned pictures: a "dentist" with huge pliers in his hand, and people holding down the screaming patient. (In the 17th century, dentists were often barbers and blacksmiths.)

Why I'm angry

Last week I was told that a certain senior manager expects to train up recent graduates as skilled Java developers in two months. These newbies should apparently be competent to work on complex enterprise systems that integrate multiple technologies.

The next day I came across an article on medium.com about Xamarin. It included the following statement about the C# programming language:

It’s a very easy language to learn and you don’t need to master it anyway. It shouldn’t take long.

Attitudes like that leave me speechless - or, more likely, sputtering in anger.

Software matters

Everything runs on software. Banks don't work without software. Hospitals don't work without software. Phones, cars and microwave ovens don't work without software.

To repeat my favourite quote from Robert Martin's "The Obligation of the Programmer".

Think about it; and think about it carefully. Nothing happens in our society without software. Nothing.

That's why good software development skills are important. It does matter if you don't master the skills. Just like it matters if the "dentist" doesn't know how to use the drill.

And you don't develop good skills in a day or a week or a month. It takes 6 years of study to become a doctor, 5 years to become a dentist, 4 years to become an engineer or a chartered accountant. And that's without the required year(s) of internship. So why do you think it would take only a month or two to become a developer?

Setting up for failure

I can forgive novices, who have never programmed, for having unrealistic expectations. We all have dreams. But I can't forgive it when people, who should know better, indulge such stupidity. Stupidity is a harsh word, but I'm angry.

Attitudes like this set everyone up for failure. The novices, the experienced programmers who have to fix the problems, the L&D staff who arranged training. And the users, who have to deal with buggy systems. It's a lose-lose situation.

There is so much I want to say about this. Am I the only one who is angry about this? How do we fix this perception? Please share your thoughts.

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