Please don’t learn to code
Could it be that the future will value the ability to read code highly, where where writing it will be a specialisation?<p>Consider the discipline of western music. Many accomplished people learn to read music, but fewer to write it. Particularly to write at sophistication. Code is written to be read: when you compose choral music you need to be mindful of an individual chorister&#x27;s ability to pitch intervals, and to find notes within the scale. (Handel and Haydn and Mozart are far easier to sightread than Bach and Beethoven.)<p>Strangely, our education system around computer code focuses on ability to write code first, and read code either as an afterthought, or not at all.<p>Our traditions come from programming languages which were very difficult to read. Unless you understood the tools for composition purposes, you probably couldn&#x27;t read them. Even the early scripting languages were impenetrable.<p>Composition-focused languages like python and golang change that. Whitespace-orientation and named parameters&#x2F;purpose-build-arg-structures help a lot. Also, you can write sophisticated python&#x2F;go without understanding complex type systems. Compare to the mental checklist you run when you need to work out where a Java or C++ method call is being dispatched to.<p>Note that western musical system is far from general-purpose when it comes to the building blocks of sound waves. It has no mechanism for the rich world we call subtones, and it&#x27;s not fantastic at rhythmic sophistication. Its strength is in the power you get within the tradeoffs between the notation and standardised instruments.