Can someone tinker her way into programming in the 2020s?
My answer is no. The attention economy has closed off a route that was available as recently as a decade ago. Background: I came across an unusually patient and helpful answer by adsy on StackOverflow, which led me to this article. After reading it, it struck me that the way people first experience computers and programming has transformed in the last 20 years. adsy got into programming the early 2000s. The dot-com bubble had burst.
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