Do I need to learn programming?

I didn't plan to write this blog, but today's events have forced me to recall many of the previous scenes. They reminded me of the same thing: I only need a little programming skills, A lot of annoying things have been solved, so I can't wait to answer the title question at the beginning. Yes, you need it!

Now, to retain some of my readers, you do not like computers or programming. Please wait a moment. This article is for you, now, programmers can go back to wash and sleep, and you have been tired after a day. You can understand what I am talking about here.

To persuade you, let me first talk about some of my experiences. Maybe you have met me too.

Scenario 1: The final motive force for writing this article today. My girlfriend urgently called me and asked me to help him solve a problem. She needs to process a bunch of data in a statistical software X, and the problem is very simple, there are hundreds of people who have made 15 multiple choice questions and need to find out the proportion of people who have chosen C in all the questions, but the difficulty is that I have never touched this statistical software X, it is impossible to find the software online within a few minutes, download it, learn about it, and then Google search for how to use the software X to complete this simple function. Of course, I can imagine the result of doing this.

Scenario 2: when developing a product, I have a colleague who needs to count the number of pages of all PDF files in a directory. The manager wants her to find an open-source software for statistics, she prefers to open all files one by one (about 30 ~ 40, I can't remember), Manual statistics, obviously 30 ~ 40 files are not very troublesome, and she will be able to handle them in less than five minutes.

Scenario 3: a different scenario. My brother is the boss of a lighting company. One day, he called to ask me how to create a folder on the company's computer so that colleagues in the Office could view the files. I immediately understood that he needed a file sharing function. I told him how to share a folder, but he couldn't find the button I was talking about, oh, he used Windows XP at the time, while I used Windows 7. Since remote control is not allowed, I had to install XP in the virtual machine and then told him how to do it step by step. But this is already the easiest way. If I tell him that a file server needs to be installed if complicated sharing is required, he will definitely drop the phone number.

Well, if you use a little programming in the above three scenarios, you can solve the problem in less than 10 minutes, and you will never have to worry about similar problems.

But why do you still don't want to learn it? I know the answer from most people is: I have worked hard to learn that thing and it has been done for a long time. Yes. For the first time, it takes almost the same time to manually solve these problems as programming, and programming is usually more time-consuming. That is to say, the time cost for learning programming is too high. So what causes the sharp increase in the time cost?

1. dislike. Yes, for many people, "programming" is like "washing the feet of the smelly old lady in the attic". It is a kind of resistance from the bottom of my heart. Especially since childhood, how do you expect them to write a bunch of symbols to do things.

2. programming language. Oh my God, there are so many programming languages. What do you think of computer science? Isn't it good to get a language. I learned Cantonese to solve the problem of Guangdong. I can't solve it tomorrow in Northern Shaanxi.

3. programming rules. It's hard to select a language, remember a bunch of rules, download some strange software, build a development environment that you don't understand, and compile it? Mars! Oh, my God, it's totally broken!

For the first point, I'm sorry to tell you that you need to actually start learning a programming language and you will find that programming is not so annoying, but I cannot guarantee that you will never hate programming. What I can tell you is that you need to do something annoying: Spend a day learning programming and then reject all the annoying things in the scenario description.

For the second point, the answer is obvious. Choosing a language similar to Mandarin can not only solve the problem of data processing today, but also solve the problem of file sharing tomorrow.

For the third point, I promise that it is not difficult to remember about 10 simple rules in your smart brain.

Everybody shoshould learn a programming language. This sentence has been said by many bosses recently. These people initiated a website code.org, which suggested that everyone should learn a programming language all their life because it taught people how to think. The initiators are all heavyweight. Bill Gates and zarborg are among them:

 

Even in a video that was not released before Steve Jobs recently, he thought everyone should learn a programming language.

Therefore, many people are excited and eager to start learning. However, after completing the tutorials on the website, they find that they still cannot solve their daily problems, this is because they want to convey a programming idea, but they do not give a specific language, so that the learners still cannot start. Finally, I want to make up for it. The recommended programming language is Python, which is very simple but powerful and can meet most of the requirements in daily work. However, the focus I want to emphasize is not here, but the focus is convenience. You only need to download an installation package of less than 20 mb from the python website. After you double-click the installation package, you can use NotePad to write programs. This is enough to kill most languages.

I will describe how to solve the three scenarios listed in the first article if python is used.

For scenario 1, I can ask my girlfriend to export data from software X to excel or XML. I believe this is a feature of most data statistics software, then I can write a program with less than 20 lines to complete this simple computation. In this way, I don't need to learn this statistical software X, and I don't need to worry about her other data processing in the future. I also don't need to go to Google to retrieve my forgotten Excel knowledge, one moves go all over the world. Excel experts may sneer at it, but you may not be able to laugh at tens of thousands of lines of TXT data files.

For scenario 2, a text document with less than 30 lines can be written. At the same time, there will be any JPG images under the statistics folder in the future, or copy the 300 TXT Novels under the folder (this must be an online fairy novel, AH) into a TXT file, you can solve the problem within five minutes.

For scenario 3, you only need to write a line of code and save it as a file similar to the text. The size is only 1 kb. After it is sent to my brother, he can double-click the file and create a file server. He doesn't need to find any sharing options at all. I don't have to worry about whether the xp I wrote on win7 can run?

Let's summarize the advantages of learning programming with Python:

1. simple installation and configuration. download a file about 17 MB to start programming and running. This is good. I used to spend two days and two nights configuring an environment, which is very painful, even though I like that programming language.

2. Easy to write and run. One Windows notepad is enough. You can run it after double-clicking it. I believe that no one is willing to take the time to familiarize themselves with complex development tools, so they have to learn how to compile and execute the tools.

3. Make sure everything is correct. Your boss may not know which language to use for project-forced friends. If it is not for him to force you to use other languages, use python, because C # Can Do python, VB can do python, Java and C can do python, Ruby can do python, and MATLAB can do python, python is called a universal glue, so even if your colleagues use other languages, Your python program can work with them. (Oh, well, I have to reiterate that this is intended for those who don't love programming and have to learn programming. It is meaningless to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each language in the field here ).

4. Easy reuse and show off. I believe that your hard-working file copy program is stored in a USB flash drive and you don't want to find it useless after you reinstall your computer. Or when you pass this program to your dad to solve the same problem, while waiting for his praise, he found that his computer could not be executed. Don't worry about the Mars issue like ". Net version is too low" or "JDK path not found. Python is very reusable. I believe that after several years of use, your USB flash drive may be like this. (Although programmers may find it disgusting, I know that, this is your toolbox that has made great achievements ):

Finally, I want to emphasize that (of course, this is intended for python fans to prevent them from scold me): python is very powerful and should not be underestimated when I recommend it for the entry language, even in a variety of large-scale software development, Douban.com is a favorite language written in Python. It is even one of the top hackers' favorite languages.