It’s gotten a lot better in recent years tbf in terms of those kinds of resources. Beginner recommended languages like Python are still a pain because it’s super easy for a beginner to bork how they set it up, but on the whole there’s plenty of online code sandboxes and other ways to get started.

Your point is definitely valid though. Why on earth would we want someone who’s just showing an interest in programming to write their own compiler??? Wtf? If someone wants to get into baking you don’t send them out into the fields for 6 months to grow some wheat.

When I was a kid I mucked around with html and css to make some GeoCities sites. I decided I wanted to learn how to code so I got a book from the library called “how to code games for beginners” or something. The thing never told you how to set up an IDE or compile the game. So I was just frustratingly typing out the code examples into notepad without a clue as to what to do. I think this was during the dialup era so it wasn’t like there was a wealth of info online.

I ended up abandoning programming for quite a few years. It just seemed like nonsense because writing graphics libs for C in notepad does feel like nonsense to a child. I wonder what life would be like if I had some better resources at that moment in time and decided you continue pursuing it.

Spain would probably be around that much if my calculations are correct.

Something with enough context to write sensible test cases for a large codebase. It would be great if you could write test cases for a couple of domains, then ask it to write cases for a third domain following the same general style as the first. It would ideally have a conversation about what things to mock/stub and what things to keep.

I personally think 5 years isn’t enough time to get to that point with something that works really well. It’s tricky enough to get a junior up to speed with doing it sensibly, but cutting down on the time it takes to build a good test suite would mean we Devs can spend a lot more time on features and improvements.

The jury system is bullshit and needs to go.

To counter this I used to visit some factories for a big contract manufacturer in the UK. They would often make say lasagne for the supermarkets and for the “premium” brands. Whilst they were all made in the same place, the “premium” brands products had much better quality ingredients in them and different ratios of the good stuff (say meat) to filler (say pasta sheets).

For some things it’s the exact same materials, but for many it’s different. You have to do blind taste tests to see which ones you prefer.

I find the opposite with some hobbies. If you buy a cheap acoustic guitar it’s going to be horrible to play and will probably sound crap. That might discourage you from continuing. More expensive guitars have a much better resale value too, so you’d probably be out of pocket for less if you buy a nice one and sell it again than if you bought a crap one and no one else wanted to buy it.

You basically haven’t played any of the game then lol. It’s a long slow burn but it’s absolutely beautiful. Make your way through that tutorial section and get your ship, from there it really opens up.