Rationality Quotes September 2012

Jayson_Virissimo

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
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No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Khan Academy has a programming course? I might try it.

Mostly, I want the easiest, most handholdy experience possible. Baby talk if necessary. Every experience informs me that programming is hard.

The first trick is to be able to describe how to solve a problem; and then break that description down into the smallest possible units and write it out such that there's absolutely no possibility of a misunderstanding, no matter what conditions occur.

Once you've got that done, it's fairly easy to learn how to translate it into a programming language.

10cata14y

This is the easiest, most handholdy experience possible: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ A coworker of mine who didn't know any programming, and who probably isn't smarter than you, enjoyed working through it and has learned a lot. Programming is hard, but a lot of good things are hard.