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Posts: 414 | Thanked: 109 times | Joined on Mar 2007 @ Silicon Valley
#11
Originally Posted by Nathraiben View Post
From experience, this does NOT help on the entry level - on the contrary. It stops people who WOULD have been willing to learn the basics from doing so, because it creates the illusion of the basics no longer being necessary.

Without automatic code creation, people are more or less "forced" to learn the basics, so anybody even remotely interested will have to do so. After their first success in doing so, they'll either get deeper into the process of writing applications, or leave because they decided it's not worth the trouble.

With automatic code creation, nobody has to go through this first step. But then, when it comes to getting deeper into the language, they would have to learn the basics first - and then human instinct for going the easiest route kicks in in form of "I can create something with a few clicks - why should I now try to do the same by writing cryptic lines of code instead?" - so potential future developers decide to stay with the automatic code creation process, instead.

And while of course the rare gem might spring forth from it, 99.99% of all applications created that way will be fart/lightsaber/vuvuzela apps.

Good points, Naithraben....

As I've been teaching myself programming over the past few years off and on, I can fully relate to your points...

However, I don't think that ALL people trying out this approach, will try and then just stop if they hit a roadblock, at least a small percentage I would think might be inspired to seek out more knowledge. The rest will just drop out as you're suggesting...which is OK too...
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