# The whole “programmers are a special genetically superior elite of deep
thinkers” meme really…

Like, Piaget demonstrated that young children will teach themselves to program
so long as you put them in a situation where they have…

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The whole “programmers are a special genetically superior elite of deep
thinkers” meme really pisses me off.

Like, Piaget demonstrated that young children will teach themselves to program
so long as you put them in a situation where they have access to programming
tools & where they don’t feel like they’re expected to fail. Since the primary
thing preventing children from programming is FUD, this is probably also true
of adults.

Occasionally, a programming problem will be difficult, and deep thinking will
help you solve it.

But, fuck, when’s the last time any of you had difficulty solving a
programming problem wherein the difficulty was essential to the problem,
instead of being the direct result of indefensibly short-sighted decisions by
somebody else?

Truly hard programming problems that people actually have to solve are rare
because people have been searching for them & documenting the best solutions
(or proving good solutions don’t or can’t exist) since literally decades
before the invention of the electronic stored-program computer.

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [October 11,
2018](https://medium.com/p/5929737e1094).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-whole-programmers-are-a-
special-genetically-superior-elite-of-deep-thinkers-meme-really-5929737e1094)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.