You can learn to love something, largely because you find yourself successful at it. On other threads you can hear from people who hated math until they learned logic and they were off to the races. I am sure that programming has the same thing; in fact, I know programming has the same dynamic. I know this because there is a steady stream of "how Python/Ruby/mobile apps/ditching my boss made me fall in love with programming again" which suggests strongly that one can change affect. Too strongly for it not to be true.
On HN? None. But I personally know people who did not care about programming until they encountered a language or teacher or project which really clicked. LPTHW seems to do that an awful lot, in fact.
I agree you can learn to love something, but to say that nothing is fun until you are good at it is simply Not True.
When I got my Apple ][ in 1980 I was not good at programming. But I had a freaking BLAST writing AppleSoft BASIC code till the cows came home. Weeks previously I probably couldn't have even SPELLED programmer.
Agreed. I've done plenty of things that I was bad at, but enjoyed anyhow.
Programming is first on the list, though you might say I had a natural aptitude for it. Despite the long road of learning (mostly) on my own, I enjoyed it all the way. (I say 'mostly' because there was a short programming class in 4th grade that introduced me to it.)
Bowling is another. I'm really not good at it. With practice I might be, but I don't practice enough. I enjoy it anyhow.
You can learn to love something, largely because you find yourself successful at it. On other threads you can hear from people who hated math until they learned logic and they were off to the races. I am sure that programming has the same thing; in fact, I know programming has the same dynamic. I know this because there is a steady stream of "how Python/Ruby/mobile apps/ditching my boss made me fall in love with programming again" which suggests strongly that one can change affect. Too strongly for it not to be true.